Alferd Packer's Grave

The story

The mountain guide who ate his five traveling companions during the brutal San Juan winter of 1874 rests beneath a suburban lawn where no municipal sign points to his crime. In February 1874, Alferd Packer led five prospectors into the snowstorms of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains bound for Breckenridge. Sixty-six days later, Packer walked out alone at the Ute agency near Montrose, looking suspiciously well-nourished. When searchers eventually discovered the butchered remains of Israel Swan, Frank Miller, George Noon, James Humphrey, and Shannon Bell at a single campsite, Packer gave shifting accounts—finally claiming Bell had gone mad, killed the others, and attacked him before Packer shot Bell in self-defense and ate human flesh to survive.

Colorado courts did not buy his story, convicting him in a saga that captivated the state. After spending years in prison, investigative reporter Poly Pry lobbied on his behalf, leading Governor Charles S. Thomas to grant Packer conditional parole in 1901. He retired to a small ranch in Jefferson County, reportedly abandoned meat entirely to live out his remaining years as a strict vegetarian, and died in 1907. He was buried in Littleton Cemetery beneath a plain government-issued stone commemorating his brief 1862 Civil War service in Company F of the 16th U.S. Infantry—a marker that makes no mention of his mountain diet.

Because souvenir hunters and pranksters kept defacing or attempting to steal the tombstone, cemetery caretakers eventually encased the marker in several feet of solid concrete. Today, the slab sits flush with the turf along S. Prince Street. There are no velvet ropes or memorial markers, just a humble veteran's headstone that looks identical to those of the Union soldiers around it—until you spot the loose change, polished stones, and plastic forks left behind by visitors who know who is actually buried there.