Welcome to the Parker Area Historical Society!

PARKER CEMETERY

Original Parker interments were made at a local cemetery located high on a hillside, just East of today’s Parker Road where the off ramp for South bound travelers on I 4-70 meets state highway 83 .( Parker Road ). This land was located on the Norman D´Arcy farm. Most of the hillside was removed during construction of the E-470 / Parker Road interchange.

Those people known to have been buried there were: the mother of Charles Schaughensy, first name not specified Mark lord, Tallman, first name not identified, and Horatio Foster. In 1885 the remains of those four persons were exhumed and re-interred at a new cemetery, the land for which was located on property owned by James S. Parker. Local legend says that land for the cemetery was donated by James S. Parker when his first wife died in 1887. However, Parkers second son Charlie had died and was buried there in 1874, and his third son Bela had died and was buried there in 1882. The cemetery did not formerly come into existence until 1884. The re-interments from the first cemetery occurred one year later. To what organization the property was donated is not clear. Title to the property did not pass until 1911, when the surviving heirs of James S. Parker deeded the property to the J.S. Parker cemetery association. Those surviving heirs were Era. B. Parker, ( second wife of James S. Parker ), Edith A. Low, ( James Parkers daughter by his first marriage ), James A. Parker ( James S. Parkers first son by his first marriage), and James S. Parker Jr. ( James S. Parker son by his second wife). The cemetery association’s trustees at that time were: Harold A. Senter, Martin H. Goddard, and Roy J. Woodbury.

Although a 1912 effort to incorporate the cemetery association failed, the association was first incorporated on July 31st 1916. Non profit status was bestowed on February 22, 1972.

The original site of the J. S. Parker Cemetery was 3.34 acres. In 1944 Lena Pouppirt donated the land between the cemetery and highway 83 and a concrete arch over the entrance way, which was located on the South side of the property. The state Highway Dept. purchased a 0.456 acre strip from the association on which to expand the highway in 1989. Money from this sale, allowed the association to purchase additional land on the West side of the cemetery.

In 1998 the cemetery´s mish mash of records were verified, updated, and computerized by F. B. McLaughlin in conference with Gilbert Carlson, an association trustee for many years. Those records were distributed to the Castle Rock and Parker Libraries.

The J.S. Parker Cemetery is privately owned by the J.S. Parker Cemetery Association. Burial is restricted to those with Parker addresses, or who have relatives buried there.

This property has been land-marked by the Town of Parker.

Information for this brief was obtained from the 1998 research report by Frank B. McLaughlin.

Updated in January 2009. by, Larry T. Smith

Location: From Mainstreet and Parker Road, drive North for .2 miles. The cemetery is on the West side of Parker Road.

Site created by Alex Hernandez, Alvie Sellmer, & James Vallejos 2009