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Search Colorado Obituaries
Look up obituaries, death records and people by name.
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Obituary guide
How to find an obituary in Colorado
For a recent death, check the funeral home's website and the Denver Post or your local daily's obituary page. For an older death, Denver Public Library's obituary indexes and the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection are the best places to start.
What to have ready
- The person's full name, including a maiden name or nickname
- The approximate date of death and the city or county where they died
- Their age or birth year
- Names of close relatives
Knowing the county narrows your search the most. Denver deaths and deaths elsewhere in Colorado are indexed in different places.
Where to look, by when the person died
| When the person died | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Last few years | The funeral home's website; the Denver Post, The Gazette (Colorado Springs), Daily Camera (Boulder), Coloradoan (Fort Collins) and Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction) obituary pages |
| 1990s to recent decades | HeritageHub, which Denver Public Library offers with a library card and which generally covers 1990 on; newspaper databases at your own library |
| Older or historic | Denver Public Library's Denver Obituary Project and Colorado Obituary Project; the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection; the Colorado State Archives |
| Official death record | See how to order a Colorado death certificate, which also covers older records at the Colorado State Archives. |
Major newspapers' obituary pages
- The Denver Post
- The Gazette (Colorado Springs)
- Daily Camera (Boulder)
- Coloradoan (Fort Collins, on Legacy.com)
- The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, on Legacy.com)
Recent listings are open to read. Older articles may need a subscription.
Libraries and archives
- Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives keeps the Denver Obituary Project, an index of obituaries and funeral notices from the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News from 1913 to 2016. Its Colorado Obituary Project indexes about 50,000 obituaries from outside Denver, mostly from the 1970s through 1990, and you can request a copy of the full obituary.
- Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, run by the Colorado State Library, has more than 8.9 million pages from over 1,050 Colorado titles, 1859 to the present.
- Colorado State Archives holds state government records. Our death-certificate guide explains which older records it has.
Timeline expectations
- Recent obituaries usually appear online within days, often before the service.
- The Denver Obituary Project stops at 2016. For later Denver deaths, use HeritageHub.
- Coverage in the historic newspapers collection varies by town and year.
Tips
- The Denver indexes are split into five-year PDF files. Open the file for the years you need and use Ctrl+F to find the surname.
- For Denver deaths before 2016, check entries for both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, since the index covers both papers.
- If the person died outside Denver between the 1970s and 1990, try the Colorado Obituary Project first.
Last verified:
Note: Coverage years, fees and web addresses are set by the libraries, archives and newspapers listed and can change. PublicLibraries.com is not affiliated with them.