Freemasonry was a powerful social institution in Gold Rush-era California, and the Masonic lodge maintained burial grounds for its members as an expression of fraternal obligation. When San Francisco's burial ban forced cemeteries to relocate, the Masons established Woodlawn at a site along El Camino Real in Colma. The cemetery's Masonic origins are visible in its monuments and iconography -- square and compass symbols, columns, and architectural details that encode fraternal meaning. Over the decades, the cemetery expanded its service beyond the Masonic community to become a general memorial park.

Colma covers just 2.2 square miles, but its seventeen cemeteries contain an estimated 1.5 million burials -- making it one of the densest concentrations of cemeteries in the world. The town was incorporated in 1924 largely to prevent annexation by neighboring Daly City, which might have redeveloped the cemetery land. Each cemetery serves a different community: the Italian Cemetery, the Greek Orthodox Holy Cross Cemetery, the Japanese Cemetery, Pet's Rest, and several nondenominational parks including Woodlawn. Walking through Colma is an exercise in reading the demographics of the Bay Area through its burial grounds.

Colma maintains a small living population -- roughly 1,500 people -- who run the businesses that serve the funeral industry and the visitors who come to tend graves. The town has shops, restaurants, and a city hall, but its economy is built on death. This gives Colma a quality that is simultaneously morbid and matter-of-fact. The residents do not find their town strange; they find it practical. Someone has to maintain the cemeteries, sell the flowers, and operate the equipment. Woodlawn, with its manicured lawns and mature trees along El Camino Real, contributes to the quiet, park-like atmosphere that makes Colma feel less like a necropolis and more like a very well-tended garden.