An Archaeological Assessment of The Russell Gulch Cemetery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*In the Shadow of the Rockies: Historical Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology in Colorado" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Several years ago, a colleague and I conducted an archaeological assessment of the Russell Gulch Cemetery in the mountains of Gilpin County, Colorado. This area housed a booming hard-rock mining industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but today, even though the area has few full-time residents, the cemetery is still a destination place for local tourists, history buffs, and families with relatives buried there. The Independent Order of Oddfellows established the cemetery in the last several decades of the nineteenth century. Over time, as residents moved away, the cemetery suffered from neglect, vandalism, and some of the cemetery’s records were lost. Our project was spearheaded by local community members who volunteered their time to clean overgrown vegetation from the cemetery and then worked alongside us as we recorded and documented the cemetery. Our goals were to collaboratively conduct archival and ethnographic research, comprehensively record the details of all graves—marked and unmarked— do limit GPR in an attempt to identify locations with either unmarked graves, or space available for future interments, and have a professional survey crew map the cemetery. My paper highlights how enthusiastic volunteers and archaeologists can work side-by-side and accomplish meaningful things together.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• *In the Shadow of the Rockies: Historical Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology in Colorado   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51942