The Park County Historical Society headed out to South Park for our Cemetery tour for 2022!. We started in Bailey and met at the Como Community Center. We made our way with about 20 attendees, to the Como Cemetery. In attendance, were well known Park County authors, Christie Wright and Laura Van Dusen! They told stories of many of the Como residents buried there, including many known and unknown former residents of the Como vicinity. Many railroad employees such as Eshe, Ballinger, Champion, Anderson and Gibbony families are buried there. Willard Ballinger was killed in 1901 in a train wreck on Kenosha Hill. Clint Eshe was the engineer on the last passenger train in 1937, and his family has a plot in the cemetery.
Another local author, Mark Hanson also attended. He will release a book soon on the Tarryall Valley mining history, which is just above the Como cemetery. He told the fascinating story of the Link family, who were local miners in the area. The Anderson and Gibbony families both worked for the railroad, and were married between the families. We also viewed the memorial to the Italian miners killed in the King Coal mine, the headstone written in Italian.
From Como, we drove to Fairplay for lunch. After we ate, we drove to the Fairplay cemetery north of town. Laura and Christie guided us through known Fairplay burials of town inhabitants of the past, including the Teter family, the namesake for the Edith Teter Elementary school in town, built in 1874. We also observed the graves moved from the town of Montgomery in 1953, to prepare to build the reservoir, now there. We also found the headstone of Marie Guiraud, the founder/rancher/entrepreneur of the town of Garo's, who dies in 1909. Another headstone we found was of Doc Bell, who was well known in the county. We tried to find the headstone of Johnny Hoover, hung from the top floor of the Park Count Courthouse in 1880, but weren't able to.
This ended our tour, ending a great PCHS trip! See us at www.parkcountyhistory.com, and on our Facebook page!
