In the foggy hills south of San Francisco lies a municipality unlike any other in the United States. With a living population of just over 1,500 people, it serves as the final resting place for more than 1.5 million souls. This is Colma, California, a town founded specifically to house the dead.
Visitors driving through its quiet streets see endless rows of headstones, mausoleums, and manicured lawns instead of housing developments or shopping malls. It is a necropolis where the deceased outnumber the living by a ratio of nearly one thousand to one, creating a unique geographic anomaly born from a ruthless real estate struggle in the neighboring metropolis.
The Great San Francisco Eviction
The origins of this vast burial ground trace back to the turn of the 20th century in San Francisco. As the city expanded rapidly, land values skyrocketed, and real estate developers began to view expansive cemeteries as wasted space.
In 1900, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance prohibiting any new burials within city limits. The situation escalated in 1914 when the city declared that existing cemeteries were a health hazard and an impediment to progress. Officials issued eviction notices to the dead, ordering the removal of all bodies from San Francisco to regain the prime land for residential and commercial growth.
A Massive Migration of Souls
What followed was one of the largest movements of human remains in history. Between 1920 and 1941, workers exhumed approximately 150,000 bodies from San Francisco graveyards and transported them south to the potato farms of Colma.
Hearses and streetcars ran day and night, carrying coffins to the newly established necropolis. Families paid ten dollars to have their loved ones moved, but thousands of unclaimed bodies ended up in mass graves. The sheer volume of transfers transformed the small agricultural community into a sprawling complex of seventeen cemeteries, covering nearly three-quarters of the town’s total land area.
A Municipality Built for Graves
The cemetery associations, needing to protect their operations from further political interference, banded together to incorporate the town in 1924. They initially named it Lawndale before changing it to Colma to avoid postal confusion.
This legal maneuver ensured that the land would remain dedicated to the deceased, protecting the area from the encroachment that had displaced the bodies from San Francisco. Today, the town features specialized cemeteries for various religious denominations, nationalities, and even a cemetery exclusively for pets, all coexisting within a two-square-mile radius.
Famous Residents and Local Humor
The underground population of Colma includes some of the most recognizable figures in American history. Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp, baseball icon Joe DiMaggio, and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst all reside within the town limits. While the rest of the Bay Area struggles with overcrowding and housing shortages, Colma remains dedicated to its silent majority.
The living residents, many of whom work in the funeral industry, maintain a dark sense of humor about their unique situation. The official town motto, displayed on government merchandise and website headers, states a simple, verifiable fact: “It’s great to be alive in Colma.”
Just south of San Francisco lies a tiny town with a dark secret.
Colma has 1,500 living residents but over 1.5 million dead bodies.
It is a necropolis where the deceased outnumber the living 1,000 to 1, born from a ruthless real estate struggle that evicted the dead…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/byIBsPosb1
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) December 11, 2025