Gold Hill was the site of the first gold discovery in the present state of Colorado. At the time (1859) Gold Hill was located in Nebraska Territory since it was located just North of the 40th parallel which was the dividing line between Colorado and Nebraska Territories. Colorado became a state with its present boundaries in 1876. The original town was located on the top of a mountain that was exposed to high winds. After the town had suffered a disastrous fire it was relocated to the West into a saddle that was protected from the wind. The cemetery is located just to the South of the present town.

All of the mining activity in what is now Boulder County grew up following the discoveries in Gold Hill. The present city of Boulder was originally settled as a supply center for the miners in the Gold Hill area and eventually other mining camps in Western Boulder County. After the gold collected from placer mining (finding it in a stream or on the ground) was used up, the mine owners began to dig in the ground to find more gold. This practice lured the "hard rock" miners from Wales to come to Colorado and show how to perform underground mining. Many of the old families in Boulder County and Gold Hill were immigrants from Wales and other areas in the United Kingdom.

The present town of Gold Hill has about 150 year-round residents. The cemetery was established in 1866. I published a book called Gold Hill Cemetery Record in 1994, a copy of which is in the Family History Library at Salt Lake. There are about 220 folks identified who are buried in the Cemetery, most of whose graves can be located. The burials began in the late 1860s and continue to the present time. I have undertaken to gather some genealogical information about those folks who are buried in the Gold Hill Cemetery mostly from local Boulder County sources. If you think you may have had an ancestor who visited Boulder County during the mining booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I will be happy to look up their name in my data base. Contributed by Jim Cox.
© 1998 Jim Cox, Boulder, Colorado.

Most of the uninhabited houses resemble this one.	The general store is the only store in town.
The Gold Hill School