Colma, the town where more than a million dead people sleep

Colma is a Californian town where, at first glance, we would all like to go on vacation.We are in the small county of San Mateo, in a privileged corner from where we can enjoy those views that directly overlook the Bay of San Francisco.

Now, there is a fact that always produces a slight chill when you delve a little deeper into the demographic data of Colma.Segun tells us the census, the number of inhabitants is just over 1,900 people, but... This town has 17 cemeteries and about 1.5 million bodies buried in their lands.

We are sure that you will also have experienced a jolt of unease before this data, so, if we also tell you that this town is known with the motto of "It's good to be alive in Colma" things will certainly start to fit you.

Let's see now that it tells us its history...Are you with us?

Colma, the town where more than a million dead people sleep

The 17 cemeteries of the city cover 73% of the land area of ​​the city. Impressive, and therefore, Colma is also known as "the town of silence" or "the town of the dead ».

However, one aspect must be made clear: the dead do not bother, there is no phenomenology of the paranormal and, more than fear, what this town produces is a certain aesthetic impact: the horizon is a Sea of ​​tombstones.

But... Where do these bodies come from? What is their origin, why are there so many? And what is more important: what happened to them? Colma's past is, so to speak, part of the past of San Francisco and the expansion of the United States itself, and hence the unique interest of this land where the true dream of the dead sleeps. Let's look at it in detail.

Vista aera de Colma (the white dots are tombstones), the rest are mass graves and cemetery limitations.

• 1900.the gold rush, a few years of misery and multiple diseases.The city of San Francisco began to house "so many dead" that there came a time when they realized that the corpses already occupied the best lands from the city.So the best option was to transfer them to Colma.

• In 1912 another ordinance came out. All the cemeteries bordering San Francisco were removed e that is, the bodies had to move to Colma to take advantage of the land.The families that could afford it could pay a private burial, those who did not, knew that their relatives would end up in a common grave of Colma, and the tombstone would be used as a «breakwater »Along with hundreds of others.

Colma was gradually becoming a Necropolis of all those bodies that the big city did not want.The objective was clear: to get developable land, and the essential problem is that this land «was already inhabited». The dream of the dead was desecrated.

Transfer of the corpses of San Francisco to Colma

A fact that we have to take into account, as explained by the Legion of Honor Museum of San Francisco, is that left many "dead by the way" .Occasionally, doing works in the city itself ad of San Francisco bones still appear.It is estimated that those killed between 1868 and 1902 were not transferred and that they would be about 11,000 bodies.Terrifying, no doubt.

Be that as it may, living-inhabitants-from Colma they are very accustomed to the fact that most of their daily landscape is cemeteries.They see it normally, although this does not mean that from time to time, surely , they look towards the ground wondering what story they will tell all those silent underground inhabitants, annoying perhaps because of so much desecration.

Miners' bodies during the gold rush

Now tell us...is there a similar story in your country? Do not hesitate in giving us your opinion and remembering our following article: The mysterious cemeteries of giant ships.