Carson City headstone project is about recognition, respect

When Melinda Cash started walking at Lone Mountain Cemetery in search of headstones for her genealogy hobby, she would frequently come upon a bare plot with nothing more than a small tin temporary marker — or often nothing at all — to identify the person buried there.

These weren’t vacant plots, but occupied graves without the dignity of proper, permanent burial markers.

The reality that some at rest in Lone Mountain Cemetery lack recognition from the living world left Cash with an unsettled feeling. It was enough to give her pause.

“As I walked, I’d come up to a plot that had no headstone or plaque,” Cash said. “I thought we needed to make sure these people are remembered.”

The issue inspired her to establish a fundraiser, the Lone Mountain Cemetery Headstone Project, purchasing headstones for those residents of the cemetery that have none.

“I want everybody to be honored,” Cash said. “My biggest reason for doing this is to honor their memory. They are deserving of respect.”

Cash, a retired state worker who now resides in Mound House, devoted herself to a genealogy hobby that led her to become a member of findagrave.com. It was through this membership that she began receiving numerous of requests from other members for information about people buried at Lone Mountain Cemetery.

As she began cataloging at the cemetery, she noticed dozens of grave sites without any identification. And it was an immediate cause for concern, Cash said.

“I felt this great emptiness inside,” she said.

There are more than 9,100 identified graves listed on findagrave.com at Lone Mountain Cemetery, Cash said, but several hundred others are not marked.

Lone Mountain Cemetery Sextant Tim Glancy acknowledged that the reasons why are varied. The cemetery has been the victim of theft and vandalism many times over the years, he noted.

Then there is the old section of the cemetery where settlers and pioneers from Carson City’s earliest years are buried. Many of them were either laid to rest with wooden markers that succumbed to time, or they were buried without any identification at all, he said.

Some were Civil War soldiers or people from the Ormsby Poor House that were moved to Lone Mountain and never identified, Cash said.

These graves likely won’t be identified, either, Cash admitted, simply because early county records cataloging who is buried where no longer exist.

“It would be nice if everybody had a headstone,” Glancy said. “But I don’t know if that will ever happen because of so many unmarked graves.”

He estimates at least 300 or more graves remain unmarked at Lone Mountain. These include the graves of babies and small children, he said.

“When children were still birthed, families didn’t usually mark the graves,” Glancy said. “These deaths are seen as a tragedy, and the families just want to forget and move on.”

Both Cash and Glancy referenced well-known Carson City resident nicknamed “Mustang Sallie,” whose community effort to recognize the children buried at Lone Mountain resulted in the establishment of the cemetery’s “baby land.”

“She saw the need and raised the funds,” Cash said.

While Cash’s focus is a bit different from the work that Sallie once did, it is no less important.

There are about 40 graves on the grassy area in front by the office that are the priority right now, both Cash and Glancy agree.

“Melinda’s trying to do what she can to make sure that what she puts on findagrave.com, they are actually there,” Glancy said.

Cash said accuracy is a crucial part of this project. She wants to be certain that the headstones are identifying the right people in the right places.

To accomplish this task, Cash relies heavily on Internet research, as well as pouring through state archives and accessing death certificates at the county recorder’s office.

Cash said the resources she puts into this project are akin to a full-time job. But to her, it is time well spent.

“This (Lone Mountain Cemetery) is every bit an important historic site,” she said. “This is very important for people tracking their genealogy and their ancestry.”

Cash said noteworthy people buried at Lone Mountain Cemetery include famed stagecoach driver Hank Monk; Samuel Clemens’ (Mark Twain) niece, Jennie Clemens; the Yeringtons; and several former Nevada governors.

To help manage the fundraising dollars, Cash reached out to the Foundation for Carson City Parks and Recreation, a local 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that focuses on funding projects associated with the parks and recreation district.

Management of Lone Mountain Cemetery falls under the Carson City Parks and Recreation Department.

To date, Cash said she has raised about $650 toward the headstone project. She approached the foundation about partnering with her efforts, in part, to obtain greater community support.

“We are stewards of the money,” explained Foundation for Carson City Parks and Recreation President David Bugli. “We were set up as a foundation for the means to accept funds on a 501(c)(3) basis.”

Bugli said Cash’s fundraising project fit the foundation’s criteria.

“We have agreed that it looks like a good project,” he said.

The advantage of having the foundation in Cash’s corner, Bugli said, is that it helps lend legitimacy to the fundraising effort and it can get the word out to more people who may want to donate.

The initial goal is to raise enough money for about 40 headstones, said Bugli.

Cash explained that money raised so far can get her project started for the first ten headstones.

She has reached out to Mike Denson, owner of Cornerstone Monuments in the Carson Valley, to produce the headstones.

Denson said he has agreed to provide the first ten headstones at his cost — about $45 apiece. These will be 8-inch by 16-inch by 3-inch stones cut from Sierra light granite, he said.

Each stone after that will cost about $150 to produce, Denson said.
Denson said he appreciates the work Cash is doing, and he is pleased to be a part of it.

“I think it’s important for burial plots to be marked,” he said. “You lose the record of who is buried where after a while.”

Cash said she hopes to start setting the headstones in place next month.