HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Colorado State Penitentiary inmates were buried here from 1871 to 1971, within sight of the prison walls
1251 S 1st St, Cañon City, CO 81212
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery; no admission charge
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat dry-landscape cemetery; paved central drive with gravel paths to prisoner sections
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1865 · NRHP Listed · Colorado Territorial Prison burial ground · Joseph Arridy burial and posthumous pardon · 1929 prison riot burials
The land for Greenwood Cemetery was donated by William C. Catlin, and the first recorded burial took place on June 16, 1865—making it one of the oldest cemeteries in Fremont County. The cemetery sits on South First Street, roughly 0.7 miles south of US-50, across the Arkansas River from the Colorado State Penitentiary.
The prison, established as the Colorado Territorial Prison in 1871, began sending unclaimed remains to two sections of Greenwood that same year. Inmates whose families did not claim their bodies, or who had no families at all, were buried in sections at the northwest and southwest corners of the cemetery. The placement was deliberate: the site was chosen to ensure the inmates would never leave sight of the prison walls.
The southwest section became known as Woodpecker Hill because woodpeckers destroyed the original wooden slab grave markers over time, leaving many burials without identification. Replacement markers—stamped metal plates reading 'CSP INMATE'—were eventually installed, and more recent sections use markers that include the inmate's name, birth date, and death date. More than 400 marked prisoner graves exist in the cemetery, with an unknown number of unmarked burials.
The most historically significant grave at Woodpecker Hill belongs to Joseph Arridy, executed in the Colorado State Penitentiary gas chamber on January 6, 1939, for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. Arridy, who had an intellectual disability, was convicted of a 1936 Pueblo murder despite evidence pointing to another man. On January 7, 2011, outgoing Colorado Governor Bill Ritter granted Arridy a posthumous pardon—the first posthumous pardon in Colorado history. A personalized headstone was subsequently placed at his grave, making it the only individually marked grave in the section.
The 1929 Colorado State Penitentiary riot, which killed several guards and inmates, resulted in additional inmate burials at Woodpecker Hill during that period.
Sources
Greenwood Cemetery's prisoner sections generate the paranormal accounts that regional ghost enthusiasts focus on. Woodpecker Hill specifically appears in accounts describing shadow figures moving between the rows of uniform CSP INMATE markers after dark, and visitors have reported the sound of unexplained laughter near the western edge of the section.
The cemetery's atmospheric qualities are not hard to account for: more than 400 prisoners, many executed by the state, buried in a section placed intentionally within sight of the penitentiary that held them. Most have no individualized grave marker, and the original wooden markers were destroyed before documentation was complete, leaving the historical record for these burials deliberately sparse.
Joseph Arridy's grave is an outlier—the only one in the section with a named stone and a documented posthumous pardon. Visitors who come specifically for the Arridy grave describe the experience as somber rather than frightening. The adjacent rows of anonymous stamped-metal markers provide the unease; the Arridy headstone provides the name that makes the larger story concrete.
Notable Entities
Two prisoner burial sections occupy the northwest and southwest corners of the cemetery. Woodpecker Hill, in the southwest corner, is the smaller section and holds death-row inmates including Joseph Arridy, the wrongfully executed man who received a posthumous pardon from Colorado Governor Bill Ritter in 2011. The metal grave markers stamped 'CSP INMATE' are visible throughout both sections.
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