Cheesman Park

Cheesman Park covers about eighty acres and sits on some of the most complicated ground in the city. The land began as Prospect Hill Cemetery in eighteen fifty-eight, holding thousands of graves, mostly paupers, criminals, and the unclaimed. In eighteen ninety Congress authorized its conversion to parkland.

The removal of remains began in eighteen ninety-three, when the city contracted an undertaker named E. P. McGovern.

McGovern became notorious almost immediately. Rather than using proper adult coffins, he stuffed multiple sets of remains into child-sized boxes barely a foot wide, mixing bones to cut costs. Newspapers exposed the practice, the city shut the work down, and an estimated three thousand to five thousand bodies were left in the ground.

That history fuels lasting ghost lore: reports of confused apparitions, unexplained sounds, and a general unease that locals tend to take seriously. The park opened in nineteen oh seven, designed by Reinhard Schuetze with a figure-eight carriage path. At its highest point stands the Cheesman Memorial Pavilion, a white marble classical structure funded by Walter Cheesman's family in his memory.

From that pavilion on a clear day, the entire Front Range spreads across the western horizon, one of the finest unobstructed mountain views in any Denver park.