Park City Museum hosts a tour of the Glenwood Cemetery this Saturday with re-enactments of departed Parkites’ lives.
Glenwood Cemetery, located at the base of the Park City Mountain Resort near the Snow Flower condominiums, dates back to 1885 when Park City was a mining town.
Diane Knispel is the director of education at the Park City Museum. She said the cemetery tour is an annual event that enlists actors to bring to life the stories of those buried there. This year’s theme is mishaps and misadventures of Glenwood residents.
“So we've got let's see, Elizabeth Kargee, there was an elevator cage problem, and her son Frank got injured through mining,” she said. “And so that is one of the people we'll be talking about Nellie Dunsmore. She had some shootings in her family where people got hurt or injured. And so we're going to be talking about that. We're going to have Phillip Spargo tell about his brother Nicholas, who was in a wagon accident. So yeah, there's a lot of different things that we'll be talking about this time.”
Knispel said the many volunteers who love to act and dress up will bring the stories to life.
“I have a script writing team," Knispel said. "And we research everybody to make sure that we have the right information. And then we put together a script. And really, the stories are themselves. I mean, we don't add a lot of drama to it, because the drama comes from the story itself.”
Knispel said the cemetery was created out of necessity for miners and their families.
“And the miners were not really taken care of by the mining companies. So all of them joined fraternal organizations that offered them insurance in case there was an accident, or in case they were killed," Knispel said. "It would help their families with the burials and with anything that they needed. And because of this, the fraternal organizations decided to purchase land so that they could have the burials in an area.”
According to Knispel there are 946 people buried in Glenwood and the museum is the current caretaker. The money raised by this event will go towards preservation of the headstones and some landscaping needs.
She also mentioned that parking is very limited, but the museum is in talks with Vail to come up with a plan.
Tickets can be purchased through Knispel at the Park City Museum. She can be reached at 435-574-9554. They are $20 per ticket.
The morning tour is almost full, but there are plenty of spaces available for the afternoon tour at 12:45.
Glenwood Cemetery is located at 401 Silver King Drive.
