"Under the pines that he loved so well, and in a grave covered with blossoms and bits of green, dropped one by one by mourning friends, the ashes of General William Jackson Palmer were yesterday laid at rest in Evergreen cemetery."

"Almost severe in their simplicity were the brief services, but the profound sorrow reflected in the crowd of 3,000 persons, the deep gloom which overcast the city, and the general cessation of all business during the last rites, signified the deep sense of public bereavement."

That is how The Gazette described the March 17, 1909, funeral of Palmer, the Civil War hero and railroad tycoon who established Colorado Springs in 1872.

He helped found Colorado College and the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind and donated land for parks, libraries, schools and churches, but never ran for public office.

The crowd was smaller Saturday, but the public bereavement remained, as a few hundred people came to Evergreen Cemetery to mark the anniversary of Palmer's death, with the funeral re-created by the Evergreen Cemetery Benevolent Society.

It was a spare and quick mock service, which is how Palmer would have preferred it, then and now.

"He did not want a big public ceremony. He was a very humble man," said Will DeBoer, Evergreen Cemetery director, who played the part of Palmer friend Col. D.C. Dodge.

The commemoration began at the train station Palmer built, now Giuseppe's Old Depot Restaurant. In 1909, reported The Gazette, a "large throng" of people greeted the train that brought Palmer's friends, as well as the urn containing his ashes, to the depot.

The funeral procession of 500 students and teachers, 75 carriages and 20 motorcars, headed east on Pikes Peak Avenue, where thousands of mourners stood with heads bowed.

At Pikes Peak Avenue and Tejon Street, workers on the new Exchange National Bank building dropped their tools, removed their hats and bowed their heads while the procession passed.

"I think they would have been devastated, absolutely in shock, like (the death of ) a president, like John F. Kennedy," said Jo Cervone, a bystander Saturday. "Every day there is something that reminds you of General Palmer. The parks, the churches, the land he donated."

"The loss was just so enormous because General Palmer's influence was so widespread," said Leslie Bergstrom. "There wasn't much he didn't have his hand in."

The throngs weren't the same, as many people seemed to regard the horse-drawn carriages and classic motorcars as a curiosity. At the grave site, there were not the city officials or "hundreds of the most prominent business men in town," as in 1909.

The audience gathered close, as a minister read some Bible verses, and that was it. As in 1909, as The Gazette reported, "The entire ceremony occupied but a few minutes."

To lengthen the proceeding, DeBoer read a mock eulogy, based on historical research.

"General Palmer did for Colorado Springs and Colorado what no other man could or would have done, and it is this unusual character of his work, far more than the mass of the money he devoted to the public benefit, that has entitled him to the honor and the gratitude of the people of the state," he said. "He was a great man. His work was well done, and the good he did lives after him forever."

Palmer probably wouldn't recognize his small resort town of Colorado Springs today, but his imprint remains everywhere, and many of Saturday's "mourners" recognized that.

They filed up to lay evergreen sprigs at his grave. In 1909, so many sprigs were left, they piled higher than the simple headstone that marked his final resting place.