Colorado Spirit Quest #424--Liberty Cemetery

"COLORADO SPIRIT QUEST"

The Colorado Spirit Quest is a series of Caches started in 2008. Placed by many individuals, near cemeteries and historic sites in hopes of paying respect to the many pioneer ancestors that have 'walked' before us. There are hundreds of cemeteries in the rural and mountain communities across Colorado. This series will introduce you to many of them. The cache pages will provide a virtual history tour of the cemeteries and tombstones.

The Colorado Spirit Quest endeavor is an enormous and relentless task. It cannot be accomplished by just one or two people. This project will only flourish if there is a multitude of volunteer cachers willing to place these caches.

After locating the cache container, take some time to reflect back on the lives of those pioneers and the effort it took to make Colorado such a great state.

If you are interested in placing a "Colorado Spirit Quest" you should contact Ivy Dog Parents or Joe Friday.

Each person that places a Colorado Spirit Quest cache is responsible for its maintenance.

Liberty Cemetery is located just west of CO 71, at the western end of FR 116. It and the road accessing it are on the Pawnee National Grasslands--on public land. Park at the highway, open the barbed wire gate, and walk 1/3 mile up the hill to the cemetery. If the two track Road 116 is dry and you have relatively high clearance, you can easily drive to the cemetery gate.

The cemetery is not maintained and is overgrown with rank vegetation and has a patch of brush dominating its center. There are 16 grave memorials of varying condition showing passings ranging between 1918 to 1927. Of the 11 memorials that include date information, seven mark the graves of infants. A small building is near the entrance gate and it is falling to pieces. Interestingly, behind this old building is a modern headstone (marking a 17th grave) showing a deceased year of 2021--a gap of 94 years since the most recent prior burial.

I did limited research to understand the origins and history of Liberty Cemetery and found no information. It would be interesting to visit with "local" ranchers to discover facts that might be available.