South of San Francisco , close Daly City , lies the modest town of Colma where the dead outnumbers the living past times a grand to one. It’s less than two foursquare miles inward size , only crammed inside it are every bit many every bit 17 cemeteries where residual the bodies of to a greater extent than than 1.5 1000000 souls.
Nearly all of the dead were 1 time proud residents of San Francisco , both during their lifetime as well as after. But at the plow of the end century , the metropolis passed an ordinance that banished all dead from inside metropolis limits. The authorities argued that cemeteries spread illness , only the truthful motive for the eviction was the ascent value of existent estate —land inward San Francisco was also precious to waste matter on dead people.
NY Times / www.colmahistory.org / Wikipedia