The sto­ry began in 1849, when the gold rush was rag­ing in Amer­i­ca and hun­dreds of thou­sands of enthu­si­asts head­ed to near­by San Fran­cis­co. Over­pop­u­la­tion pro­voked an epi­dem­ic cat­a­stro­phe, and by the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, more than 25 ceme­ter­ies appeared in Col­ma.