Contributed by Karen Mitchell, photos by Floyd Kelling. Please note: This is a full listing, current to Fall of 2007. If anyone knows of any burials in this cemetery please let me know. There are many unmarked graves. The numbers in the notes column, such as 0-0-0 represent the location in the cemetery.
Pueblo Chieftain 8-10-2010 - Buried History - Boone - It's hot, dusty and extremely historic.
The small St. Vrain Cemetery, located just west of the Huerfano River near where pioneer scout Charles Autobees (also spelled Autobee) settled, has been a final resting place for area residents since the 19th century.
Many of the graves in the old section — including those of Autobees and his family members — have been lost to time and the weather.
But the newer section, established in 1940, has 352 marked graves and about 80 unmarked ones, according to Abel Rael of Avondale. Rael is superintendent of the St. Vrain Cemetery Association, which 2 1/2 years ago formed a beautification committee to improve conditions at the cemetery and make it a more hospitable place.
"The weeds were about 8 feet tall," he says. "There was a time when people would drive by and not even know the cemetery was here. The water wasn't working. The road is narrow and dusty. It's hard to get to the cemetery in the winter — we've had a lot of people go off the road. The hearse has even gotten stuck on the road through the cemetery."
Sandra Vigil, president of the association, says when her mother Viola Barreras was buried there, the small cemetery was "so weedy and horrible." "The person who was playing music at the grave got his car stuck in the mud. And sometimes you can hardly breathe when there's a (funeral) procession out there because of all the dust."
Clean-up days scheduled by the committee have drawn good participation. The weeds have been cut and the ground has been leveled. Water — which the association buys from the Avondale Water District — has been installed. A portable toilet has been brought to the site. But the cost of improving the cemetery is more than what can be brought in through fundraisers, donations and limited burials.
An average of five people a year are buried at the cemetery, according to Rael.
The cemetery association plans to appeal to the Pueblo County Commissioners for help. It wants the county to widen and pave or chip-seal 53rd and 56th lanes, which lead from Olson Road to the cemetery and from the cemetery to U.S. 50.
The group also is hoping the county can help it secure grants or other funding that would help pay for improving the road through the cemetery, planting grass and installing a sprinkler system, getting tools and equipment — members now bring their own, and their backhoe is in need of major repairs — and doing further work on a veterans' wall.
Rael says 54 veterans are buried in the newer part of the cemetery.
"I know we are asking the commissioners for a lot, but our committee has never asked for money from the commissioners before," Vigil says.
County Commissioner Jeff Chostner says he's gotten a lot of calls about chip-sealing the roads leading to the cemetery. "We'd like to do it," he says, "but it has to be sequenced in with the other road projects. There are a lot of competing roads. It's something we'll have to look at." Chostner says the utility of the road and, unfortunately, not the character of the site is what the county considers when prioritizing projects. "What would drive it more is the traffic and how many people use the road." Chostner says the county often provides assistance to people seeking grants. "Often people need a governmental sponsor when they apply for a grant and we will join with them on this. I haven't seen this (St. Vrain's) application, but we do have people who review them."
The land for the newer part of the cemetery was donated — and deeded — in 1940 to the St. Vrain Cemetery Association and Rael says it's understood that it belongs to the people of Avondale.
There also are burials of people from Boone, Vineland and Pueblo.
Another of the cemetery association's goals is to locate more of the graves in the old section, mark them if possible and get historic designation for what is one of the oldest burial grounds in this part of the Arkansas Valley.
One grave in the old section that is marked — with a military headstone — belongs to Jesus Pando (1842-1915), who was a member of company G of the Third Colorado Cavalry and who fought under Col. John Chivington at Sand Creek.
The cemetery owes much of its historical significance to Autobees — it's sometimes called Autobees' cemetery — and many of the people buried there and many who are living in Avondale and Boone are his direct descendants. Both Rael and Vigil count him as an ancestor.
The St. Vrain name comes from Ceran St. Vrain, who along with Cornelio Vigil, in 1843 was granted a huge tract of land south of the Arkansas River by Gov. Manuel Armijo of New Mexico.
