Tonopah Graveyard

Tonopah Graveyard at sunset. April 2010. Photo by C. Schneider

The old Tonopah Cemetery was started May 7, 1901 with the burial of John Randel Weeks at the site. The cemetery served Tonopah until April 1911, when due to the growth of the town and mining in the area, expansion was no longer possible. A new site was then opened a mile west of town.

Many of Tonopah’s pioneer resident are buried in the cemetery which contains over 300 bodies. Among them are many victims of the 1902 “Tonopah Plague”. (It has never been determined what the “Tonopah Plague” was and during the winter of 1901-02, it claimed the lives of over 30 men and caused a mass exodus from the area.)

My dear friend Bob Moss and I drove through the mystical and time-lost town of Tonopah, Nevada at the start of a cross country pilgrimage. We had to stop and explore, for the atmosphere was…uncanny. This is the sort of town one might choose to ride out the Apocalypse in.

The truly otherworldly, beautiful, eerie and plague-haunted Tonopah Cemetary contains mainly gravesites made of very old wood, which stand out starkly against the dry earth. Just next door – eek – sits the very nifty Clown Motel. Lobby full, I mean, FULL – of collectible and leering clowns in every form. I kid thee not. I filmed Bob singing a related tune for the proprietor of said establishment in the spring of 2010.

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