COLMA, Calif., Dec. 3 — Years ago this tiny city’s 18-hole golf course was sliced in half. Last spring the nine-hole course became a shorter nine. Next to feel the squeeze was the pet cemetery, which sacrificed half its two acres.

Where did all the land go? To feed the major local growth industry: human burial grounds.

Such is Colma, Calif., land of the dead for three-quarters of a century, and becoming more so all the time.

“We have 1,500 aboveground residents,” Mayor Helen Fisicaro said, “and 1.5 million underground.”

Colma was founded as a necropolis by cemetery operators in 1924, to protect graveyards from capricious acts of government. The businesses of many of those operators had been disrupted a decade earlier when the city of San Francisco, 10 miles to the north, evicted all but a couple of the 26 cemeteries there, along with the thousands of bodies they held. The city’s politicians had argued that cemeteries spread disease, but the true reason for the eviction was the rising value of real estate, said San Francisco’s archivist emeritus, Gladys Hansen.

For the first few decades, Colma’s residents were mainly gravediggers, flower growers and monument makers. But by the 1980s, other types of people and businesses were settling in next to the dead. Today the little city has many thriving businesses, including car dealerships, two Home Depots, shopping centers and a game room.