It’s kind of hard not noticing this insanely packed little graveyard on your way into Tonopah. There’s several hundred graves, and it looks like they were filled in only ten years.

There’s a metal placard that says some fourteen miners fell victim to the Tonopah-Belmont Mine fire of February 23, 1911. The others all appear to be Tonopah’s pioneer residents who fell victim to a mysterious 1902 “Tonopah Plague”. The placard goes on to say that no one ever could figure out where this plague came from or what it really was, just that it killed most of the town off.

The sun’s going down. You can check out a grave up close or just continue on past the graveyard.