When people travel, there are certain preparations everybody makes. Toothpaste? Check. Plane ticket? Check. Cemetery map? Check.

Well, maybe not everybody when it comes to that last one.

As I prepared for our family summer vacation to Denver this past summer, I hopped online to see what cemeteries were in the area. Denver has a number of cemeteries, but I kept going back to Fairmount. I didn’t know then that it had a tie to Georgia.

As the second oldest large cemetery in the city, Fairmount opened in 1890 when Denver was still quite young (established in 1858). At 280 acres, the cemetery was the largest developed landscape west of the Mississippi. The grounds were designed by German-born architect Reinhard Schuetze, who I’ll talk about more next week.

Fairmount is still a very active cemetery, has a funeral home, modern offices and a crematorium. Not long ago, they added space for meetings and events as well. They even hold popular movie nights on one of their greenspaces.

A week before our trip, I took the risk of calling Fairmount’s office to find out if they gave tours. I use the word “risk” only because some cemeteries do not take kindly to crazy visitors like me who ask a lot of questions and want to write about their cemetery.

Fortunately, that was not the case at all with Fairmount (which is still blessedly independently owned and operated). I left a message and within a few days, Fairmount’s director of business development Michael Long called me back.

I did explain that I was coming from Atlanta so I wouldn’t be buying a plot because I didn’t want to take up his valuable time without disclosing that. Thankfully, this didn’t bother him in the least and he even offered to take me on a golf cart tour of Fairmount’s grounds. I nearly dropped the phone, I was so surprised and pleased.

After we’d been in Denver a few days, I dropped off my husband and son at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and headed over to Fairmount. Diane Kandt, who I later discovered is manager of first impressions, greeted me in the office. Whoever came up with that title had Diane in mind because she is excellent at her job, making me feel at ease while I waited for Michael.

It was already in the 90s with bright sunlight when our tour began, so I apologize for the quality of my photos. Some of the pictures I took with my phone came out blurry so I borrowed some from Fairmount’s web site.

Despite ongoing renovations, Michael showed me the inside of the chapel, designed by Henry Ten Eyck Wendell. A New York native and Cornell graduate, Wendell also designed Fairmount’s Gate Lodge and several Denver homes.

One of those homes was the Henry Treat Rogers house (since torn down) at 1739 E. 13th Ave. The house is said to be the inspiration for the 1980 film “The Changeling” starring George C. Scott. I watched it once and it scared the bejeebers out of me. The house was located near Cheesman Park, which was built over what was originally Denver City Cemetery (a story for an entire blog post).

Now here’s where the Georgia connection begins. Wendell arrived in Augusta, Ga. around 1908 during a building boom. He was soon busy designing homes for prominent families and the new St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, which had burned in 1916. It was halfway through construction when Wendell died at the age of 55.

Despite having a home in Augusta, Wendell was staying at the local Albion Hotel the night he was served a warrant for his arrest, the charge thought to be for a “moral indiscretion.” The bizarre story of his death, which involved him jumping over a stair railing, is worth reading.

Built in 1890 when Fairmount opened, the Little Ivy Chapel is a prime example of 13th-century Ecclesiastical French Gothic architecture and was designated a historical landmark by the City of Denver in 1976. Michael hosted a short video about it that you can watch here.

Dr. James Bratton, Professor Emeritus of Denver University, designed the chapel’s organ for Stephen E. Watson of the Watson Memorial Co. The pipes were custom made in Germany, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It was built by Norman Lane, Denver’s first resident organ architect-builder since the late 19th century. Originally designed to be placed in Mr. Watson’s home, it was installed in the Little Ivy Chapel in 1977.

After seeing the chapel, we began our golf cart tour of the grounds. Nearby is the imposing but beautiful Iliff family monument. I found out later that it weights a whopping 65 tons!

An Ohio native, John Wesley Iliff turned down an offer from his father for an interest in a local farm and headed west at the age of 21. In Kansas, he helped organize Ohio City Town Company in 1857 and built the first store there. He moved to Auroria (now Denver), Kansas Territory, in 1859 with a wagon load of goods and opened a successful general merchandise store amid the Colorado gold rush that brought fortune seekers from around the country.

In 1861, Iliff sold the store and bought cattle weakened after the long trek across the Plains. After nursing and fattening the cattle, he sold them for a substantial profit. He married his Ohio sweetheart Sarah Elizabeth “Sade” Smith in January 1864, but she died a few months after giving birth to their only child, William, in 1865.

In 1868, Iliff moved to Cheyenne, Wyo. to better manage his operations selling beef to railroads there. He owned 15,500 acres in 54 sections (always near water) throughout Colorado. Later, he returned to Denver where he had successfully invested in real estate and banks, as well as shares of Chicago’s Union Stockyards.

In 1877, Iliff become ill with a gall bladder obstruction created by his many years of drinking alkali water on the Colorado plains. He died in 1878. His second wife, Elizabeth Frazer Iliff, continued running his large business operations and raising their children. Eventually, she sold his ranch holdings and invested the proceeds. After marrying Bishop Henry White Warren in 1883, the couple later donated $100,000 to endow Iliff School of Theology (located by the University of Denver).

John Iliff was originally buried at Denver’s oldest cemetery, Riverside. But in 1920, his daughter Louise had his remains re-interred at Fairmount. The 65-ton Iliff monument was also moved. Elizabeth (whose second husband died in 1912) died in 1920 and was buried in the Iliff plot at Fairmount with her first husband, John.

Next week in Part II, I’ll continue my tour of Fairmount. It includes a visit to the  mausoleum, which has one of Denver’s finest stained glass collections.

Last week, I shared some of the history of Nebraska’s Norfolk Regional Center (formerly the Norfolk State Hospital for the Insane or Norfolk Asylum) and the NRC’s New Cemetery, along with stories of patients that lived there.

I preface today’s post with an admission of guilt. I went into a condemned building slated for demolition, something I have never done before. I am a rule follower 99 percent of the time. But on this day, the rebel in me superseded my usual mild-mannered self.

That’s one reason I waited until after demolition to post these photos, because I did not want to encourage anyone else to act as I did. Looking back, Christi and I could have injured ourselves. There wasn’t a soul around that day so if we had, I don’t know how we would have gotten help if we couldn’t reach our phones. In other words, don’t be a bonehead like us. Stay out of abandoned buildings!

When we arrived at the NRC on a sunny Saturday in April, I had no idea what to expect. I had seen a photo essay about the place written by a talented photographer who had been there in January 2015. The remaining buildings slated for demolition that she photographed looked to be boarded up with a lot of “no trespassing signs” so I had little hope we’d see anything interesting. I was wrong.

Conditions were different for us. First, because it was a Saturday, not a single soul was in sight. Fencing had been taken down and the signs were gone. Doors and windows were boarded up in the first building we walked up to, but there was no fence around it any longer.

The front doors were padlocked so we made no attempt to go inside. Apparently, the building was occupied up until about six years ago as a “low-cost dorm.” Stories about the conditions in that building vary but some residents claimed to hear a lot of unexplained noises at different times, especially on the off-limits locked up third floor.

I also read that squatters lived in it after the building was officially closed (it flunked a plumbing inspection and mold had gotten bad). There may have been people still living inside when we were there but I can’t imagine it was a pleasant experience with no heat/AC or running water.

A series of underground tunnels once connected the NRC buildings for decades, but they were sealed up before demolition. The harsh Nebraska winters probably necessitated such passageways back then.

We walked toward the next building we saw and I realized the front entrance that had been boarded up in the pictures from January 2015 was wide open. No signs were present telling us to keep out. I believe it was last used primarily for employees, not patients. But I have no doubt some patients were seen there at some point.

As Christi and I walked up to the building, I abandoned my usual common sense and proceeded to clamber over the debris and went inside. Christi followed. There were sharp nails sticking up and all manner of hazards, but because the floor appeared to be concrete, I wasn’t worried about us stepping through a rotten wooden floor. Still, I can’t believe I did it.

We explored the ground floor first, careful to avoid nails. I was half afraid I’d step on one and get tetanus.

We wandered down toward the other end of the ground floor and I found the stairway down into the basement. I don’t like basements so I didn’t venture down there. If squatters were going to be in the building, I figured they might be down there.

Christi was still exploring downstairs when I looked up the staircase to the second floor. I went up and stood at the top of the landing.

But before I had moved more than a few feet, I heard what I can only describe as one of the most unearthly sounds I’ve ever heard. A chill shot straight down my spine. My first thought was that I had startled a squatter and she had wailed, because the noise sounded like a woman.

I do not put much stock in the paranormal or ghosts. But I am willing to concede that whatever I heard up there sounded NOT of this world. I turned around and hot footed it downstairs to Christi. I wanted out of there NOW. Having heard the same sound, she readily agreed and we went out the side door. The bright sunlight and fresh air instantly made me feel better.

If you want to see more and much better photos, visit my friend Trish’s page. She visited the NRC a few weeks later with a friend and was braver than we were, including going down into the basement. You will definitely want to read what happened when she went up to the second floor.

Across the way was the physical plant with its huge smokestack. Another utility building behind it was already partially demolished. These buildings all had asbestos warning signs so we didn’t go inside.

Behind these buildings, we saw what looked like barns. These were probably in use when the NRC had its own gardens to provide the patients’ food.

By this time, I was ready to see some cemeteries. We visited the New Cemetery first and then went in search of the old one. If you drive on the dirt trail behind the agricultural center, you will find yourself in the fields behind NRC. We parked and walked toward where we thought it was.

A word of warning. This past week I found pictures a man took of the Old Cemetery in 2011. His caption noted that anyone wanting to visit it needs to get permission to be escorted onto the property, which he had done. They took him by golf cart and let him go inside to look around, then took him back to his car. I got the sense this is private property from what he wrote. So if you do what we did, you may be asked to leave.

At the time of our visit, I did not know any of this. We found the cemetery among some trees and there were no signs saying to keep out. The gate was not locked but was secured by a twined wire that I easily unwound.

Only three markers are in the Old Cemetery but Find a Grave lists a total of 75 people buried there. Little is known about most of them.

The son of James and Sarah Grant Zink,  Marion Earnest Zink was a native of Iowa. According to the 1900 Census, he was heading a household that contained himself, one of his brother, his sister, her husband and their daughter.

His Find a Grave memorial included an obituary in the March 10, 1910 Sherman County Times:

Word was received here yesterday of the death of Marion E. Zink, who died in the insane asylum. Mr. Zink, as will be remembered was found in a pitiful condition in Denver where it is supposed he was beaten and robbed and from which condition he suffered mental derangement, and he was sent to the hospital for the insane at Lincoln. He was about 35 years of age and lived near Austin prior to his being sent to Lincoln.

Of course, Zink had not been sent to Lincoln but Norfolk. But if the rest of this sad tale is true, I can’t imagine the pain his family probably felt.

A native of Polk County, Indiana, John Lewis was 21 in 1861 when he enlisted in the Union Army as a private in the 4th Iowa Infantry Regiment and was later promoted to corporal. He re-enlisted more than once. Company E saw action at Vicksburg, Chattanooga and the Battle of Atlanta. He mustered out July 24, 1865.

Census records from 1885 show him living in Clarinda, Iowa (home of another mental hospital). Lewis applied for an Invalid’s Pension on July 3, 1888, in Iowa. He died at the NRC on Nov. 29, 1911. Mary E. Lewis, his widow, applied for a widow’s pension on May 4, 1912, based on his service.

A native of Chatham, Canada, Calvin Carey was born in the 1840s and also served in Union Army during the Civil War. He enlisted as a Private in New York on March 10, 1863. After a few transfers, he started active service in Company G, 94th New York Infantry Regiment. Carey was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. He was discharged on March 5, 1865, with Distinguished Service noted on his record.

After the war, Carey married Sarah Ann Hadden, settling in Michigan. The couple had nine children and also lived in Iowa and Nebraska. He is listed in the 1889 Omaha city directory as a laborer. Their last child was born in 1892. Carey died at the NRC Only three years later on Feb. 19, 1895. The 1900 census records show his wife and three of his children living in Adams, Neb.

I am sure many of you are curious as to why there are so few markers for so many dead. I can’t answer that entirely except to say that such was the case at many mental hospitals across the country during this time. Patients were often poor and many had lost touch with family. There was usually nobody there to mourn them, to pay for a marker that would signify their life.

This week, I read a story about an adopted a 12-year-old boy in Fargo, N.D. who spent the summer mowing lawns to raise money to purchase a grave marker for his biological father, whom he had never met. The man was buried in Chicago with no marker.

This wise young man said something that resonated with me and could be applied to this situation. “I don’t think anybody should go unknown in life, even though their choices they made or anything.”