[7] With most of Colma's land dedicated to cemeteries, the population of the dead—not specifically known but speculated to be around 1.5 million[8]—outnumbers that of the living by a ratio of nearly a thousand to one.

Erwin Gudde's California Place Names states seven possible sources of the town's being called Colma:[11] William T. Coleman (a local landowner), Thomas Coleman (a local resident), misspelling of Colmar in France, misspelling of Colima in Mexico, a re-spelling of an ancient Uralic word meaning death, a reference to James Macpherson's Songs of Selma, and two Ohlone possibilities, one meaning "moon" and one meaning "springs".

Heinrich (Henry) von Kempf moved his wholesale nursery here in the early part of the 20th century, from the land where the Palace of Fine Arts currently sits.

The business was growing, and thus required more space for von Kempf's plants and trees.

Von Kempf then began petitioning to turn the Colma community into an agricultural township.

Those for whom no one paid the fee were reburied in mass graves, and the markers were recycled in various San Francisco public works.

[14] Some examples include drain gutters at Buena Vista Park and bolstering breakwater near the St. Francis Yacht Club.

The main rail line between San Francisco and San Jose running through Colma had been bypassed by the Bayshore Cutoff, completed in 1907 and providing a route closer to the San Francisco Bay shoreline, and the former main line was repurposed as a branch line to move coffins to Colma.

Decades later, the right-of-way for the branch line through Colma was purchased by BART for use in the San Francisco International Airport extension project.

[14] An early effort to incorporate in 1903 was condemned by the San Francisco Call as "a scheme whereby the town of Colma is to be made a plague spot of vice" to benefit gamblers and crooked politicians.

Since the 1980s, however, Colma has become more diversified, and a variety of retail businesses and automobile dealerships has brought more sales tax revenue to the town government.

[20][21] According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.9 sq mi (4.9 km2), all land.

[7] It borders Daly City (to the north and west, separated by Junipero Serra Boulevard), South San Francisco (to the south, separated by Arlington, Mission, and Lawndale), and San Bruno Mountain State Park (to the east).

[25] Colma is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula at the highest point of the Merced Valley, a gap between San Bruno Mountain and the northernmost foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range.

[26][27] The foothills and eastern flanks of the range are composed largely of poorly consolidated Pliocene-Quaternary freshwater and shallow marine sediments that include the Colma and Merced Formations, recent slope wash, ravine fill, colluvium, and alluvium.

These surficial deposits unconformably overlay the much older Jurassic to Cretaceous-aged Franciscan Assemblage.

There were 586 housing units at an average density of 306.9 per square mile (118.5/km2), of which 224 (39.7%) were owner-occupied, and 340 (60.3%) were occupied by renters.