Medina Cemetery Mystery
Historian Ken Jessen just wrote two excellent pieces about the history of Mariano Medina’s Cemetery. A third article in the series is on its way. Here is the link to the first article. The second article is here: After the cemetery was destroyed by the county in early 1960, as Jessen notes, “the remains were put in “suitable containers” and transported the short distance to Namaqua Park where they were buried and covered with a single concrete slab combined with an elongated tombstone-like feature. On the slab are the names of those thought to have been removed.”
Mariano Medina
One of the names on the new marker is that if Marcelina (Lena) Medina, Mariano’s young daughter who tragically died shortly after her 15th birthday. Whether her real bones rest there is a mystery. According to one early pioneer recollection, Lena’s body was stolen from their house on the Big Thompson River and spirited off by her mother for a secret burial on a ridge to the west. That incident became the initial scene in my historical novel, Mariano’s Crossing, published by Pronghorn Press in 2012.
October first, 2016, was one of those magically beautiful Colorado autumn days that blessed the thirty participants in our sold-out historic sites tour for the launch of my new historical novel, Mariano’s Choice. On our first stop, we visited the ruins of the old Weldon school in Sylvan Dale Ranch’s Big Valley. Then our vehicle caravan ascended the old quarry road on Red Ridge, the fictional site of Lena Medina’s secret grave, to peer over the edge of the towering cliff where a golden eagle soared over the valley below. Next we drove to Namaqua Park, site of Mariano’s original trading post and stagecoach stop, then on to the restored Medina cemetery, where tour members got a chance to heft a replica of Medina’s Hawken rifle and learn more about Mariano Medina from Loveland Historical Society members Bill Meirath and Sharon Danhauer. After returning to Sylvan Dale for Lunch, I presented my slide show introduction of Mariano’s Choice and read an excerpt from the new book.