Two Denver historians publish guide to the city's burial grounds

Mark A. Barnhouse and James M. Cavoto Sr. have released "Historic Cemeteries of Denver," a book covering Riverside, Fairmount/Emmanuel, Mount Olivet, Crown Hill and Fort Logan, plus a chapter on smaller cemeteries in and near the city. The book discusses more than a dozen Denver-area burial grounds and the people buried in them.

The project started in 2018, when Barnhouse and Cavoto pitched a book about Fairmount Cemetery to Arcadia Press. The publisher declined, classifying Fairmount as a business rather than a historic site, and asked for seven or eight hundred advance copies to be purchased up front. "Fairmount does not have a gift shop," Barnhouse said. "No cemetery has the cash flow that would make that make sense."

After Barnhouse reframed the proposal as a survey of multiple cemeteries, History Press, a subsidiary of Arcadia, approved it. The two men had met through the Denver Posse of Westerners, a group that has met monthly since 1945 to research, discuss, write and publish history of the American West. Cavoto previously worked as vice president of sales at Fairmount Cemetery.

The first draft came in nearly a year late and at almost triple the proposed length. Barnhouse spent nine months cutting it down to 58,000 words, which remained 8,000 over the assigned maximum. "When I turned it in, I told them I couldn't get it tighter," he said. The publisher asked for more cuts. Barnhouse and Cavoto agreed to print at 58,000 words and forgo their royalties. "It was a labor of love," Barnhouse said. "Neither of us were doing it for the royalties."

The book opens with a photograph of a headstone at Golden Cemetery that marks no individual grave. "This is a cemetery," the stone reads. "Lives are commemorated, deaths are recorded, families are reunited..Communities accord respect, families bestow reverence, historians seek information, and our heritage is thereby enriched."

Barnhouse said he wants the book to serve as a guide to the cemeteries themselves. "I can still walk down Millionaire's Row in Fairmount, that main central drive that starts at the Ivy Chapel and heads southeast," he said. "I still marvel at all the names you can see on those stones. We know all those names."

"Historic Cemeteries of Denver" is on shelves now, at West Side Books and other independent retailers.