Just south of San Francisco is a town whose official motto is "It's great to be alive in Colma." That's a joke with a point. According to 99% Invisible, Colma's living residents are outnumbered by its dead about a thousand to one, with roughly 1.5 million people buried there. Cemeteries cover 73% of the town.

A city with nowhere to bury

The town's official history says Gold Rush crowding and disease drove up San Francisco's death rate. Twenty-six cemeteries were established in the city, and by 1880 most of those left were nearly full. In 1886 the Catholic Archdiocese bought 300 acres of former cabbage and potato farmland south of the county line. Holy Cross Cemetery opened there on June 3, 1887. Seven cemeteries were operating by 1900 and six more by 1910.

The eviction

On March 26, 1900, San Francisco passed an ordinance banning new burials. Its land was too valuable for the dead. On Jan. 14, 1914, eviction notices went to the city's cemeteries ordering them to remove bodies and monuments. The town history says years of court fights followed. The eviction became final in 1937, and disinterments from the remaining cemeteries began in early 1940. 99% Invisible reports that moving a body with its headstone cost families $10. Bodies with no money or next of kin behind them went into mass graves in Colma.

Where the headstones went

Unclaimed headstones were reused as building material, according to 99% Invisible. Some were placed at Ocean Beach to help hold back erosion. Others line trails and gutters in Buena Vista Park, where broken fragments with lettering are still visible.

A town built to protect the graves

On Aug. 5, 1924, the area's associated cemeteries incorporated a 2.2-square-mile town named Lawndale. Its first mayor, Mount Olivet superintendent Mattrup Jensen, said in 1941 that the goal was to protect the cemeteries from any future San Francisco expansion. The name changed to Colma in late 1941 because the Post Office wouldn't let two post offices share the name Lawndale, and Southern California already had one. Colma's 2020 census population was 1,502.

99% Invisible notes that Colma's famous residents include John Daly, the namesake of Daly City, along with Joe DiMaggio and Levi Strauss. You can learn more at the Colma Historical Museum on Hillside Boulevard. The living still vote here too: see our guide to the Colma City Council race.