Before I left on vacation I wrote about Joshua Norton who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United
States. He is probably my favorite character in history and typifies the craziness that is associated with California and especially San Francisco. I said I hoped to find his grave and get a picture. I succeeded! That's me beside the headstone. Those dots on the base of it are coins people have left.
His grave is not in San Francisco, it's in Colma, just south of the city. Colma is between Daly City and South San Francisco. Colma is a city full of graveyards.
Why is Norton buried in Colma and not his beloved San Francisco? He was, once. But aside from a national cemetery in the Presidio (which is US Government property), and Mission Delores grave yard (Where San Francisco was founded) there are no longer any cemeteries left in San Francisco. Every grave in the city was dug up and moved - mostly to Colma. They said it was for health reasons, but it was mainly because real estate was too valuable to be left to dead people.
Colma is interesting. There are over a million residents of Colma, but only a little over a thousand of them breathe. There are 17 cemeteries and 1 pet cemetery in Colma.
Because of the San Andreas Fault, San Francisco is often called "the city that waits to die." With a little black humor, Colma is sometimes referred to as "the city that waits for the city that waits to die!"
VW
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