Buckskin Cemetery is what remains of Buckskin Joe, the Park County camp also called Laurette. The town sat in Buckskin Gulch, just northwest of today’s Alma, on the east side of the Mosquito Range. Gold showed up along Buckskin Creek in 1859. The camp was organized in September 1860 and named Laurette, a blend of Laura and Jeanette Dodge, said to be the only two women then in camp. Locals still called it Buckskin Joe, after Joseph Higginbottom, a trapper and prospector known for his buckskin clothes. By 1861 it had hotels, stores, and a bank, and on January 7, 1862, it became the Park County seat. The placers played out. By 1866 the town was reported deserted, and the courthouse was hauled down the valley to Fairplay. Horace Tabor kept a store here before Leadville. A 1950s tourist version of Buckskin Joe was built from moved buildings miles away. The original site’s lasting piece is the cemetery.
The burial ground is down the road from the old camp, on Buckskin Creek, at about 10,600 feet. Stone dates cluster in 1861 and 1862. One marker, for Thomas Fahey, says he left his cabin for the mine on a February day and was not found until June. Iron fences and gates outlasted the cabins. Alma still uses the cemetery, so newer stones sit among the mining-era ones. South Park National Heritage Area has led summer tours here, pointing out people such as Ida May Snell, an Alma child who died at three, and Corporal Daniel M. Clark, a Civil War veteran of the 2nd Colorado.
The ghost story is Silver Heels. The legend says a dance-hall woman arrived by stage in 1861, named for the silver heels on her slippers. When smallpox hit the camp, she stayed and nursed miners, then vanished. Tellers say the disease scarred her face and she would not be seen. A few years later a heavily veiled woman in black was reported walking the cemetery with flowers, and locals decided it was her. Mount Silverheels, 13,829 feet, carries the name. The sightings are folklore. No record identifies the woman, the cabin, or a burial.
A second tale is cruder. J. Dawson Hidgepath is said to have fallen to his death on Mount Bross in 1865. After burial, his bones were reportedly found in Alma and reburied at Buckskin, then found again. That story circulates as a prank legend, not as a cemetery record.
The cemetery is northwest of Alma, off Highway 9, on the Buckskin Gulch auto tour. It is an active and historic burial ground on forest land. Stay on the paths, and do not treat the iron enclosures as a set. Snow closes the gulch for much of the year.
The history here is the 1860 camp, the short run as county seat, and the stones from the first two winters. Silver Heels is the story people attached to the cemetery after the town was gone.
Crow Hill Almanac: Buckskin Joe
Newer stones share the same ground. This one is from a visit to the Buckskin Joe cemetery area.
Colorado Road Trip – Buckskin Joe
Relevant links
- Buckskin Joe, Wikipedia — Laurette, the 1862 county seat, and the move to Fairplay
- South Park National Heritage Area tour — recent guided visits and named burials
- Find a Grave: Buckskin Cemetery — also listed as Alma Cemetery; coordinates 39.29080, -106.07690
- Legends of America: Buckskin Joe — the Silver Heels telling and what is left of the camp