[Argurnenoni]

December 9, 2006

Colma, Calif., Is a Town of 2.2 Square Miles, Most of It 6 Feet Deep


Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Colma was founded in 1924 as a necropolis, and has never failed in its intended purpose. Above, the Greek Orthodox cemetery there.


The town’s incongruous motto: “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma!”


By CAROL POGASH

COLMA, Calif., Dec. 3 — Years ago this tiny city’s 18-hole golf course was sliced in half. Last spring the nine-hole course became a shorter nine. Next to feel the squeeze was the pet cemetery, which sacrificed half its two acres.

Where did all the land go? To feed the major local growth industry: human burial grounds.

Such is Colma, Calif., land of the dead for three-quarters of a century, and becoming more so all the time.

“We have 1,500 aboveground residents,” Mayor Helen Fisicaro said, “and 1.5 million underground.”

Colma was founded as a necropolis by cemetery operators in 1924, to protect graveyards from capricious acts of government. The businesses of many of those operators had been disrupted a decade earlier when the city of San Francisco, 10 miles to the north, evicted all but a couple of the 26 cemeteries there, along with the thousands of bodies they held. The city’s politicians had argued that cemeteries spread disease, but the true reason for the eviction was the rising value of real estate, said San Francisco’s archivist emeritus, Gladys Hansen.

For the first few decades, Colma’s residents were mainly gravediggers, flower growers and monument makers. But by the 1980s, other types of people and businesses were settling in next to the dead. Today the little city has many thriving businesses, including car dealerships, two Home Depots, shopping centers and a game room.

Still, 73 percent of Colma’s 2.2 square miles is zoned for cemeteries — or “memorial parks,” as the operators call them. There are 17 such parks, including those that cater to Italians, Jews, Greek Orthodox, Japanese and Serbs.

Colma, where the two major property owners are a land holding company and the Roman Catholic Church, is in a sense a place where an evolution has come full circle.

“Most Americans used to live near a graveyard in the 18th century,” said David C. Sloane, author of “The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History.” “That changed in the 19th century, when big cemeteries were on the edge of the cities and became destinations,” the precursors to civic parks. But by the 20th century, Dr. Sloane said, an aversion to dealing with death had made cemeteries places that people “went out of their way not to go to.”

Given that environment, clusters of cemeteries in outlying areas may seem only natural. Still, though one occasionally finds several cemeteries grouped together these days, 17 in “a single place is very, very unusual,” Dr. Sloane said.

Here, hearses far outnumber hot rods. Colma’s museum has a cemetery room, of course. Instead of the metal signs that customarily mark boundaries between towns, new ones made of somber granite have been ordered by town officials. Everyone knows that it is against the law to cross a funeral procession. Wedding parties spill out of stretch limousines to be photographed at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park’s duck pond, and weddings themselves are held at the cemetery’s small chapel, next to its crematorium.

Colma’s motto is “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma!” And residents say they are comfortable being alive among the mausoleums, the marble obelisks and the tombstones. They express appreciation for the tranquillity of their hometown, where a serene, occasionally whimsical attitude toward death prevails.

Having grown up with death, Owen Molloy says that “it doesn’t creep me out.” Mr. Molloy’s family owns the only bar in town, a mourners’ gathering place two or three times a week, and he fondly recalls playing hide-and-seek among the tombstones of various graveyards and sipping his first beer, at age 12, among marble angels and Ionic columns. He marvels at the view from the deck of his home, which overlooks Holy Cross Cemetery.

Living alongside the cemeteries “doesn’t matter” to Ashley Hurtubise, 16. “It’s just another part of town,” she said.

City Councilwoman Joanne del Rosario does not give her underground neighbors a second thought. “I’m more afraid of the living,” she said, “than I am of the dead.”

In the way New Jersey students know that Thomas Edison’s laboratory is in West Orange, the people of Colma know that Wyatt Earp’s ashes are buried at Hills of Eternity, a Jewish cemetery (he wasn’t; his wife was), and that Joe DiMaggio is at Holy Cross Cemetery, where visitors often lean bats against his gravestone.

Everybody knows that Tina Turner’s dog is wrapped in her fur coat at Pet’s Rest Cemetery, the final stop for 13,000 dogs, cats, rabbits, goldfish and cheetahs. Even after last summer’s downsizing, plots remain, though they are so expensive ($550 to $850 and up, depending on the size of the pet) that some families opt for cremation or for stacking their dead pets vertically. Pet’s Rest draws so many mourners that, says the owner, Phillip C’de Baca, some form carpools and occasionally fall in love and marry.

Dr. Sloane, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, says there is a growing demand for space at American cemeteries that is fueled in large part by immigrant families who insist on elaborate burials as a way to help establish their identity in a community. In Colma, so little undeveloped property remains that an acre sells for more than $2 million.

The cemeteries have two choices, said Steve Doukas, general manager of Greek Orthodox Memorial Park: build taller mausoleums or buy more land. Either way, added costs are naturally passed along.

“As expensive as it is to live in the Bay Area,” Mr. Doukas said, “it’s also expensive to be buried here.”

Cypress Lawn offers burial plots that cost as much as $20,000, or $250,000 for a family plot, said Ken Varner, its president.

And what does a cemetery ultimately provide for that kind of money? “Memory management,” Mr. Varner said.

“Cemeteries,” he said, “are really for the living.”


In addition to 17 cemeteries for people, there is one for pets.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company