The Monument Cemetery Record Two Neighbors Spent Years Correcting

Monument's oldest public record is a five-acre cemetery one block north of Highway 105 and Beacon Lite Road. For much of its history, parts of that record were wrong. The town's paperwork misspelled names, recorded the wrong birth and death years, and in some cases placed people in one part of the grounds when they were buried somewhere else.

Two neighbors fixed it. John Howe began correcting the cemetery records in 2010, and Michael Weinfeld joined him in 2018. Readers may know both names from the masthead of Our Community News, the all-volunteer paper delivered free to more than 24,000 Tri-Lakes homes and businesses. Weinfeld is its managing editor and Howe is its vice president.

On Saturday, October 24, they will walk the grounds and tell those stories in person.

Thirteen years of fixing the paperwork

Their work happened in stages, starting long before anyone was talking about a book.

Howe brought deep knowledge of the cemetery's maps and ledgers. Weinfeld brought research skills from 33 years as an award-winning Associated Press journalist in Washington, D.C. In 2023 they gave the Monument Town Council a 73-page report of their findings. A council member then suggested they turn the research into a book.

That book, Shootouts, Killings, and War Heroes: The History Hidden in Monument's Cemetery, came out from Filter Press in December 2024. Weinfeld has called the many errors in the records the biggest obstacle in writing it.

So the walk on October 24 is more than a seasonal ghost-story stroll. It is the result of a public records cleanup that took more than a decade, led by the people who did the work.

What the ground holds, in order

The cemetery's timeline begins earlier than the town's official ownership of it:

1. 1860. The oldest marked grave belongs to Alonzo Welty. People were burying their dead on this land for about 26 years before it legally became a cemetery.
2. 1876. Francis M. Brown is killed in a shootout over cattle. On October 25 of that year, the Colorado Mountaineer runs a front-page article with firsthand accounts from people who saw the shooting.
3. May 28, 1886. Charles Bissell, a New York resident, sells the five acres to the Town of Monument for $1.
4. 1909. A train wreck near Husted kills 12 people and injures 60. Many of the dead are buried in Monument Cemetery as unknowns.
5. 2016. The plaster-of-Paris markers on 128 unknown graves are crumbling. Eagle Scout Kent Griffith arranges granite replacements.
6. 2023. Howe and Weinfeld present their 73-page report to Town Council.

Today the grounds hold about 1,000 people. All of the roughly 1,700 plots have been sold, though not all are in use yet. In other words, a cemetery that started with a $1 land sale has no plots left to sell.

The shooting that happened in a different building

The Brown case shows why the corrections matter. For years, the shooting was said to have happened in the Limbach Saloon. Howe and Weinfeld found that it actually took place in Henry Limbach's grocery store. Their proof was the 1876 Colorado Mountaineer article with its eyewitness accounts.

Henry Limbach himself is buried in the same cemetery. He is Monument's town founder. The man whose store was the scene of the town's best-known shootout now lies a short walk from the man who died in it.

Both authors have said that finding stories that went unreported, or were reported wrong, was the most rewarding part of the project.

"Cemeteries are fascinating because they tell us about the history of the town and the pioneers who arrived starting in the 1870s." — Michael Weinfeld and John Howe, speaking to The Gazette

Farmers, veterans, and a fearless neighbor

Along with the shootout, the book covers other people buried here:

• Paton Wilson, a Civil War veteran who went on to farm potatoes and reportedly grew about 25,000 pounds per acre.
• James Newbrough, a World War II hero.
• Isabella Trigg, remembered as one of the town's most fearless women for saving a young boy's life.
• David McShane, who built a fort with a secret passage to his house that sheltered more than a dozen families during frontier conflicts.

Weinfeld has also mentioned two threads the coverage leaves unexplained: a set of unusual causes of death found in the files, and a link between the cemetery and "the nation's most infamous prisons." Published reports don't say who is involved, so you'll have to hear it from the authors on the walk or read it in the book.

For military families, the veterans' graves matter. Monument Cemetery holds people who served in the Civil War and World War II, and the book's title calls them war heroes. Military service in this town goes back well before Fort Carson or the Air Force Academy existed.

The first time they've told it at the graves

Howe and Weinfeld have given talks on this material before, but indoors. They spoke at a Palmer Lake Historical Society program in March 2024. They have also presented to the Monument Homemakers and the Tri-Lakes Lions Club, and held signings at Covered Treasures Bookstore. Our research turned up no earlier author-led walking tour of the cemetery itself.

That makes October 24 the first chance to stand at Welty's 1860 marker, see Kent Griffith's granite stones on the unknown graves, and hear the corrected Brown story from the people who corrected it.

Here are the details from the Town of Monument's event listing:

The 719-487-1047 number is a landline, so if no one picks up, leave a voicemail.

One detail to confirm when you reserve is where to meet. The Town's listing gives the address as 800 Beacon Lite Road, while the Our Community News calendar lists 800 Eighth Street. The Gazette places the cemetery one block north of Highway 105 and Beacon Lite, which fits both. Ask Howe which entrance the group will use when you call.

Making an afternoon of it on Second Street

If you'd like to spend more of the day on local history, Covered Treasures Bookstore at 105 Second Street has author signings both Saturdays before and during tour week. On October 17, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Jan MacKell Collins signs Good Time Girls of Colorado and Wicked Cripple Creek District. Her event was moved from September 26. On October 24, the day of the walk, Lynn Horton signs her debut thriller Loose Arrows and Donna Guthrie brings her children's book Hildie and the Halloween Potion, from noon to 2 p.m.

That signing runs until 2 p.m., the same time the walk starts, so stop by the bookstore early, around noon, if you want to make both. Weinfeld and Howe's book has a history of signings at Covered Treasures, so it's a sensible place to ask about a copy.

Some of what you'll hear on the walk corrects records that stood for more than a century. Francis M. Brown died in a grocery store, and Alonzo Welty's grave predates the cemetery by 26 years.

Knowing a town's history is part of feeling at home there, and that matters even more when a PCS order brings you to Monument on short notice. Nicole Strom helps military and relocating families get settled in the Tri-Lakes area with local knowledge like this from the first week. If you're planning a move here, start with a conversation and request her free relocation guide.