The Cemetery Above the Water: Remembering Swallows, Colorado

Standing quietly above the Arkansas River valley, historic Swallows Cemetery preserves the memory of the families who helped shape this early southern Colorado community.

Last week, I happened upon a small historic cemetery near Pueblo West quite by accident. Nestled quietly among the rolling hills and prairie grasses, the cemetery overlooked the blue waters of Pueblo Reservoir. It was peaceful, beautiful, and seemingly untouched by time. I stopped simply because I was curious.

What I did not realize then was that the cemetery belonged to a community that no longer exists. As I began researching the history of Swallows, Colorado, I was stunned to learn that the original townsite now lies beneath the waters of Pueblo Reservoir.

Swallows was once a small railroad community, in the 1870s, west of Pueblo along the Denver & Rio Grande line. Like many small Colorado settlements, it served as a gathering place for ranching families, railroad workers, and travelers moving through the Arkansas River valley. There were schools, homes, businesses, and the ordinary rhythms of daily life that make up every community. Today, however, nothing remains visible of the town itself.

Graves from the nearby community of Turkey Creek were relocated to this high cemetery before the reservoir waters rose above it. Standing there beside the gravestones, it became difficult not to imagine the lives once connected to this place. Families buried their loved ones in the original cemetery, believing the community around them would continue for generations. Instead, decades later, the graves were carefully relocated as the valley prepared to disappear beneath the rising waters of the reservoir. My husband quietly observed, "It's very interesting how change and progress steamroll over everything." His words stayed with me as I looked across the water toward the place where the town once stood.

Swallows had already endured hardship long before the reservoir project transformed the landscape. One of the most devastating events in the area’s history was the catastrophic flood of 1921. Torrential rains sent destructive floodwaters roaring through communities along the Arkansas River and its tributaries. Railroad lines were damaged, homes were swept away, and lives throughout southern Colorado were forever changed. Small communities like Swallows felt the force of both nature and economic change in the decades that followed.

And yet, despite everything, the cemetery remains. There is something deeply moving about historic cemeteries that survive after the towns themselves vanish. The cemetery becomes the final physical reminder that a community once existed—that people lived, worked, struggled, raised children, built homes, and loved one another there.

As I walked among the gravestones overlooking Pueblo Reservoir, I realized I was standing above an invisible town. Beneath the water rests the landscape where streets once stood, trains once passed, and daily life quietly unfolded along the river valley.

The cemetery now watches over a different kind of landscape, but it still fulfills its original purpose: preserving memory.

Places like Swallows remind us how fragile communities can be, and how quickly the physical evidence of ordinary lives can disappear. Sometimes all that remains is a cemetery on a hillside and the stories waiting to be rediscovered.