Irrigation work at Denver’s Cheesman Park last Thursday and Friday unearthed the former cemetery’s eery past in the form of four preserved skeletons.

The coroner’s office dated the bones as older than a century and will re-inter them at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Their identities, however, are lost to history.

“Cheesman’s cemetery had a lot of criminals and paupers buried without headstones or any records,” said Jill McGranahan, spokeswoman for the Denver Parks and Recreation Department. “There’s really nowhere to look to find out who these bones belonged to.”

Today a scenic park southeast of downtown, Cheesman was part of the 320 acres set aside as Prospect Hill Cemetery in 1859.

The first person buried there was John Stoefel, who was hanged for killing his brother-in-law. By 1890, however, the cemetery was rarely used and a blight to the area, and the city relocated thousands of unclaimed bodies at a cost of about $2 each.

The graveyard was reborn as a city park in 1907, many of the trees planted in holes that were once graves, according to historical accounts.