Colma became the location of a large number of cemeteries when San Francisco, the town's powerful neighbor to the north, passed an ordinance in 1900 outlawing the construction of any more cemeteries in the city (mainly because of increased property values making the cost of using land for cemeteries prohibitive), and then passed another ordinance in 1912 evicting all existing cemeteries from city limits. (A similar scenario prevails in New York City's borough of Manhattan, where only one active cemetery still exists — the Trinity Church, New YorkTrinity Church Cemetery and Crematory, at the intersection of 155th Street and Broadway, on the northwestern edge of Harlem, New YorkHarlem). The relocation of cemeteries from San Francisco to Colma is the subject of A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries, (2005) a documentary by Trina Lopez. Colma was briefly called Lawndale, but because another city with the name Lawndale, California already existed, the town changed its name back to Colma in 1941. Originally, the residents of the town were primarily employed in occupations related to the many cemeteries in the town. Since the 1980s, Colma has become more diversified, with the variety of service and retail businesses typical of a small town in the United States. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colma%2C_California