Dayton Cemetery

Established in the 1850s, when this ground still belonged to Utah Territory and the town was barely a decade old, this is among the oldest cemeteries in Nevada. Its stones read like a roster of the early frontier—placer miners, emigrants who never finished the westward trip, mill hands, ranchers, and the families who stayed when the gold thinned. Many graves predate statehood by years. Walking it is the quickest way to understand how long people have lived and died at this bend in the river. The grounds remain open above Old Town Dayton.

What the plaque says

Founded in 1851, this is one of the oldest constantly maintained cemeteries in the State of Nevada. The trail to the Mother Lode passed directly in front and the wagon tracks can still be seen with careful observation. James Finney (Ole Virginie) after whom Virginia City is named is buried here. The known names are primarily Italian as this ethnic group has predominated down through Dayton's early history. Recognizing the potential of the land and the irrigating value of the Carson River, the Italians made this area the breadbasket for the Comstock.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chollar Mine — 5.5 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Virginia City — 6.0 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Carson City — 10 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 12 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices

More markers nearby

• Hall’s Station — 0.3 mi
• Nevada’s First Gold Discovery — 0.3 mi
• Union Hotel & Post Office — 0.4 mi
• Dayton School House – 1865 — 0.4 mi