We're on the side of a steep, steep mountain in Colorado.

It's a summer day, 1929, and two boys visiting town from Texas are making the hike up.

This is a tough hike, so probably the boys are keeping their eyes on the ground in front of them,

and that's when they spot it.

A skull.

Maybe at first they think it's an animal skull.

I mean, that wouldn't be so weird. Animals do die on the sides of mountains, right?

But no, taking a closer look, this is definitely from a human. There's even a jawbone.

At first, the boys actually think they're going to keep this as a souvenir. They want to mail it

back to Texas. But somewhere along the way, they get caught. I mean, I imagine it's very

suspicious to see two kids trying to wrap up and mail a skull.

So the local police step in, they start asking questions.

They're worried that something bad might have happened up on the mountain.

They send a search crew up to see if they can find anything else where the skull was found.

And they do.

The local marshal uncovers a bundle of bones. It's carefully wrapped up and there's even some pieces of a coffin nearby with a nameplate

on it. And that's when the townspeople realize, oh no, this isn't a murder. This is poor old Emma Crawford.

Emma Crawford had first been buried on this mountain 30 years before. We'll get into the who and the what and the why in a minute. But the thing to know now and the reason why we're talking about Emma today on this episode is that today, 130 years later, the people of Manitou Springs do something very, very interesting to celebrate her story.

Emma Crawford is a legend here in our community,

and every year we honor her by racing coffins up our main street.

I'm Amanda McGowan, and this is Atlas of Skura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

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