The hook
A town where the dead outnumber the living by more than a thousand to one, built entirely to bury San Francisco's.
01Why it's worth it
When early-1900s San Francisco ran out of room and evicted the dead from the city, they were shipped a few miles south to Colma, which became a town made of graveyards. Today roughly 1,500 living residents share it with something like 1.5 million buried, and its unofficial motto really is "It's great to be alive in Colma." It's strange to drive through, block after block of cemeteries, and it's thick with famous graves: Wyatt Earp, Joe DiMaggio, William Randolph Hearst, and Emperor Norton, San Francisco's self-declared 19th-century emperor. This isn't somber tourism; it's a real oddity, a whole town that exists to hold the past, and hunting names through a historic cemetery for an hour is quietly fascinating.
02How to experience it
It's just south of Daly City. Pick a cemetery or two, Cypress Lawn and the Hills of Eternity are rich ones, and look up who's buried where first (Wyatt Earp, Emperor Norton, DiMaggio). Be respectful; these are active cemeteries. The small Colma Historical Association museum adds context.