For the past 45 years, the San Juan County Historical Society has maintained Hillside Cemetery, cleaning headstones and restoring deteriorating grave sites. Photo by Ziyi Xu, Rocky Mountain PBS
Emma Harris, aka Russian Princess, is buried at the cemetery. Photo by Ziyi Xu, Rocky Mountain PBS
Memorial marker for the 1918 flu epidemic. Photo by Ziyi Xu, Rocky Mountain PBS
A gravestone for Kid Thomas details his murder by vigilantes. Photo by Ziyi Xu, Rocky Mountain PBS
Silverton circa 1878. Photo courtesy Western Mining History
Ziyi Xu is a multimedia journalist for Rocky Mountain PBS, covering Southwest Colorado and the Four Corners Region
(This article was originally published 10/18/25 on rmpbs. org and is being rerun in the Silverton Standard with permission)
North of Silverton, on a slope overlooking the town, lies Hillside Cemetery. About 3,000 graves mark the hillside, some with names, others blank. The cemetery stands as a record of Silverton’s history dating back to the late 19th century. In the 1950s, Freda Peterson began vis…
