(N38° 17.475 W118° 54.080)
The irony of Aurora is that although the town has been completely wiped out the cemetery is a lot more preserved. In the next few blogs I will be covering the cemetery. I will survey a few markers of the ones you can find there. This one will be different than the one I did a year ago with Bodie. With Bodie I had a small pamphlet I purchased years ago that gave some notes with most of the graves. With Aurora I only know the stories of a couple of people.
Back at where we parked is that sign on the rock about Aurora that I showed in the first blog. From there the dirt road that heads north one can be walk a few hundred feet to get to what was known as St. John's Cemetery at the time. From there one starts to encounter the tombstones just off the side of the road.
This is one of the first markers you see. It is for W.M. Boring who was a Nevada State Senator. A native of Tennessee, he died in Aug. of 1872 at the age of 43 years.
Just turning to the right gets you to the tombstone for Mrs. Mary Ann Reid who was 25 when she died in Nov. of 1879. Some markers like this are very hard to read even when you are there.Incidentally, in the video about the cemetery I made an inside joke regarding one of my relatives. When he was here with me years ago I sent him investigating near this grave. I have old lower quality camcorder footage of him regarding this, and that is why I mentioned that. For the time it was a silly thing I would show to my extended family and is why I made mention of it in the current video. Other than that, it has nothing of importance to this cemetery or anyone else...unless you know Ervin...in that case ask him. ;)
Netta Pfeifer, who was the wife of F.C. Pfeifer, 1880-1906. It simply says at the bottom, "Rest".
Many fenced in areas do not have any markers at all. As I get to the older section of the cemetery there would have been many graves with just wooden markers for the time. Those have long since gone. Here is one of those fenced in graves that has a tree growing right in the middle of it.
Here is the main section of the cemetery. It is easy to spot, and it is fenced in. You can see there is a sign there.
I'll be heading into this cemetery and showing some of the markers in the next blog. Since I am "connected" to the "silent majority" let me translate this sign by saying, "respect the graves and cemetery here".
At this point I just want to mention that there has always been a "catch-22" situation with this blog that I have known from the beginning. I enjoy showing these types of places on the blog. Yet, I know that there is some danger in doing so because there is always someone that does not have the same type of respect. There are some places I have never mentioned and will not because of this.Once in a while I will get someone that will contact me that feels the need for taking home souvenirs, or the, "I can take this home and sell this on e-bay" mentality. This irritates me to no end. Some guy contacted me a while back and thanked me for showing where a movie took place. Then he proceded to tell me that he found something from that movie's set to take home. That is NOT the point of me showing or going to places like this. Take pictures, take videos, but leave whatever you find there for others to see. Fortunately, the guy was totally clueless, and what he found had nothing to do with any movie.
If there is ever an example of the tragedy of people scavenging and leaving nothing behind then the town of Aurora is it. Of course, the town and cemetery are protected these days by Federal Law.
R.I.P. Aurora (Youtube Version)
R.I.P. Aurora (Vimeo Version)
