Mesa County Genealogical Society

The old cemetery on the Fruit Ridge road, about one mile north of the city limits, long ago abandoned will be entirely effaced and the bodies still remaining in the old cemetery will be disinterred and removed to the the Orchard Mesa Cemetery. Preparations are now being made by the Gourley-Platt Furniture & Undertaking company to make this change, and the old cemetery, long unsightly in its appearance, will soon be a thing of the past. It is thought that about sixteen bodies are still in the old graveyard. Nearly all, if not all, of the graves are unmarked, and in nearly every instance the identity of those who were laid to rest in this cemetery years ago has been lost, and again on the removal to the Orchard Mesa cemetery the bodies will rest in unmarked graves.

The plot upon which the graveyard is laid out is owned by the Grand Junction Town & Development Company. Twenty-five years ago this company laid out the cemetery and many lots were sold. For several years the city's dead was laid to rest here, and there had been perhaps forty interments before it was decided to abandon the cemetery. The last burial service held there was in the year 1887, and from that year until the present time the little plot of ground directly on the public highway has been neglected and un-cared for. This was Grand Junction's first cemetery. For many years following the year 1887 interments were made in a cemetery near the W. M. Miller ranch and then about 12 years ago. the Orchard Mesa cemetery was laid out and lots sold. Efforts have been made from time to time by the residents of Fruit Ridge to have the old cemetery obliterated. At one time a petition, quite lengthy, was prepared and presented to the county commissioners, but no action was taken.

During the last two weeks the Town & Development Company decided to have the change made and the company let the contract to the Gourley-Platt company the latter part of the week. A more dreary and desolate scene ???? that presented by this long forsaken burying ground could hardly be imagined. The remains of an old adobe or brick chapel stand near the center of the plot. A road, the branch of the main highway, finds its was across a portion of the grounds. Years ago some of the graves were marked with stones, but today these stones are broken and scattered in all directions. Many of the mounds have sunken, and there are numerous empty graves, graves from which the bodies were removed long ago. No shade trees nor grass is there to give and air of restfulness to the place. It has all the loneliness and desolation that wrapped in oppressive gloom and weirdness the old graveyard described by Thomas Gray in his famous elegy.