The strange story of the Californian town where 70% of the “population” died.

In Colma, a California city, life is precious, and travelers passing through this city encounter a welcome sign that reads, “It’s good to be alive in Colma!”

Located in San Mateo County, about ten miles from the San Francisco Foggy Maelstrom, this two-square-mile stretch is the only city in the United States where the dead outnumber the living.

Home to approximately 1,400 people and nearly two million dead bodies, most of the population resides just meters below the surface, occupying seventeen cemeteries and 73% of the city.

Colma: the city of the dead

Colma was born as an agricultural community. Founded in the first half of the 19th century, it was home to gold prospectors, Spanish missionaries, frontiersmen and settlers.

They had all heard of California gold and had been drawn to the West.but then they gave up and opted for more reliable work.

Many ended up in San Francisco, which in the 1880s had seen a huge influx of immigrants from all over Europe. and America.

That overpopulation led to disease, and San Francisco was soon hit by a pandemic.

In an article published in the San Francisco Newsletter and Advertiser in May 1887 a particularly restless commentator objected to being forced to live next door to so many cemeteries.

“Half a million pounds of rot is caned by hand and covered with a few feet of dirt”they were writing.

And he added “the scientist knows that all the evils of this decomposition are hidden only by stone vaults and expensive fences. Disease germs grow and spread in spite of them. They rise to the surface from the deepest grave to poison the earth and the air.”

Land was in great demand in this area and most of it was used to bury the growing number of dead..

The same year that the San Francisco News published his damning article, the city’s Catholic Archbishop Patrick Riordan bought 283 acres for burial use.

Also, in an effort to keep San Francisco from becoming one big cemetery, all burials within the city limits were prohibited.

So they transformed the nearby town of Colma into the only place where San Franciscans could be buried.

The comments that have filled the city of Colma​

Colma expanded its cemeteries, but, in 1912, more bodies arrived after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors ordered that all the corpses were dug up and buried outside the city.

For thirty years, horse-drawn carts have transported thousands upon thousands of remains from San Francisco to Colmaand the Catholic Cemetery of Santa Croce, founded by Archbishop Riordan, received more than 39,000 corpses.

Many corpses were so old they could not be identified and were piled up in mass graves.

Currently buried in Colma, among others, Joe DiMaggio, baseball star and husband of Marilyn Monroe; Levis Strauss, the jeans maker; William Randolph Hearst, America’s extremely wealthy press baron.