Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainOver 600 Gold Rush burials from 1848 — and a woman in a burgundy dress who stands on Cold Springs Road, gesturing to drivers passing the cemetery.
Cold Springs Rd, Coloma, CA 95613
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access as part of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Day use vehicle fee may apply at park entrance.
Access
Limited Access
Uneven hillside terrain with grass, gravel, and stone grave markers. Unpaved paths between plots.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1848 · Gold Rush Era Burial Ground · Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park · California History
The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill on January 24, 1848, made Coloma the starting point of the California Gold Rush. Within a year the community had grown large enough to require a cemetery. The Pioneer Cemetery dates to 1848, making it one of the earliest established burial grounds in California's Gold Rush region.
Over 600 souls are recorded as buried here, though the uneven settlement of the era means many graves are unmarked or markers have deteriorated. Among the interred are miners who arrived during the 1849 rush, farmers and merchants who followed, women and children who came with families or to work the camp economy, and a diverse cross-section of people whose identities reflect the chaotic demography of early California. The graves range from substantial stone markers to modest wooden posts that have long since rotted away.
The Schieffer family plot in the lower cemetery is one of the few family groupings that can be specifically identified today: it includes William Schieffer, who died in 1861 at age 2; May Schieffer, who died in 1890 at age 27; and Charles Schieffer, age 42. The plot was apparently intended for four graves but holds three — a detail that local accounts have attached to the cemetery's most enduring ghost story.
The cemetery came under the ownership of the State of California in 1981 and is now part of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. The Historical Marker Database records two markers at the site, confirming its founding in 1848 and its Gold Rush-era significance.
Sources
The most persistent account from Coloma Pioneer Cemetery involves a woman described as dark-haired, wearing a long burgundy dress, seen standing on Cold Springs Road at the cemetery's edge. She waves to passing motorists — a deliberate, directed gesture, according to multiple accounts — and when anyone approaches or attempts to reach her, she is simply gone. Greenish lights and cold spots have also been reported near the cemetery's lower section.
Local accounts collected by El Dorado County tourism researchers and cemetery historians connect the figure to the Schieffer family plot. The family's grave space was constructed to hold four people, but only three are buried there: a two-year-old boy, a woman who died at 27, and a man in his forties. Folklore holds that whoever was meant for the fourth space died or was buried elsewhere, leaving the family separated in death, and that the woman in burgundy is discontented over that separation.
The apparition has also been reported on the road itself — a bearded man in ragged clothes wandering further north along the highway has been attributed in separate accounts to a Gold Rush miner still patrolling a claim. El Dorado County's tourism circuit has featured the cemetery in its haunted-location roundups, and the site draws visitors in October who combine it with Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
Walk among over 600 Gold Rush-era graves dating to 1848, including miners, merchants, and their families. The Schieffer family plot — a recurring focal point in local ghost accounts — is in the lower section of the cemetery along Cold Springs Road.
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