Mountain View Cemetery's Celebrated Dead

When actress Dawn Wells, who gained fame as the character, Mary Ann Summers in the TV show, “Gilligan’s Island,” recently died at the age of 82 of complications due to COVID-19, it was only appropriate she be laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery in Reno.

Wells, who was born in Reno, had long maintained close ties with her hometown. In fact, she was buried adjacent to her mother, Evelyn, with whom she shared a birthdate (October 18), who passed in 2004.

Mountain View Cemetery, which is part of a complex of two cemeteries commonly referred to as the Mountain View Cemeteries in Reno, has long been the final resting place for prominent Renoites. The dual burial grounds include the newer, non-denominational Mountain View Cemetery, as well as the older Masonic Memorial Gardens Cemetery, which dates to 1871, according to the Order of Masons.

Reno historian John Townley has written that Reno’s earliest cemeteries also included a Catholic burial ground on land now part of the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Hillside Cemetery on Nevada Street and University Terrace.

After the establishment of the university, the Catholic Cemetery was moved to its present location north of McCarran Boulevard while Hillside Cemetery, now largely abandoned, is still there, looking out of place as it sits adjacent to fraternity houses and apartment buildings.

The present boundaries of Masonic Memorial Gardens appear to have been established in 1899, when the Masons purchased additional acreage to expand the cemetery.

Wandering the lush, green lawns of the peaceful and picturesque cemeteries, it’s easy to spot dozens of prominent names—names that seemingly half the streets in Reno were named after, including Zolezzi, Wedekind, and McCarran.

In the Masonic Cemetery, which contains many Nevada politicians, you can find the large sarcophagus memorializing U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran as well as a tall bronze bust commemorating former Nevada Governor John Sparks.

Another political figure of note there is Edwin Ewing (E.E.) Roberts, who was born in Pleasant Grove, California, in 1870, and died in Reno on December 11, 1933. 

Roberts served as Reno’s mayor from 1923-1933 and as Nevada’s Congressional representative from 1911 to 1919. He taught school in Empire, Nevada from 1897-1899, and was a successful divorce lawyer in Reno for many years.

The political figures are generally fairly easy to find because their plots were often marked with either massive granite mausoleums or, in a few cases, bronze busts, now turned green with age, which depict their likenesses.

A few of the non-political figures who found peace at the Mountain View Cemeteries include famed 19th century journalist Alfred “Alf” Doten, who was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1829 and died in Carson City, Nevada, in 1903.

Doten wrote and edited for newspapers throughout the state, including Virginia City, Gold Hill, and the mining camp of Como (above Dayton), and maintained detailed diaries over several decades that described life in early Nevada.

Additionally, Mountain View is the final resting place of Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Bronn Johnston, who was born in Reno in 1912 and died in the city in June 1977. 

Johnston was an animal rights activist, who, in the 1950s, exposed the cruel and yet legal methods used by Nevada ranchers, hunters, and “mustangers” to eradicate wild horses roaming on public lands.

She led a grass-roots campaign, which involved school children writing letters to Congress, to draw attention to the mistreatment of the horses, and sparked the passage of federal legislation banning the capture, branding, and death of wild horses on public lands.

The Mountain View and Masonic Memorial Garden cemeteries are located on Stoker Avenue, directly north of West Fourth Street in Reno.

New Book Details Devils Hole Pupfish's Struggles to Survive

Devil's Hole Pupfish (Photo courtesy of Olin Feuerbacher)

The Devils Hole Pupfish is a small blue thing. Measuring only about an inch-long and often lacking pelvic fins like other pupfish, it has been described as “tiny and wimpy.”

   But, as author Kevin C. Brown notes in his new book, “Devils Hole Pupfish: The Unexpected Survival of an Endangered Species in the Modern American West,” it is a survivor, having overcome a host of challenges during the past century and a half.

   The Devils Hole Pupfish (the apostrophe is typically left off when referring to this particular species, according to Brown), is known, scientifically, as Cyprinodon diabolis. It is a fast-moving thing that earned its name because of the way groups of them seemed to chase each other about—like a pack of puppies.

   According to Brown, part of what has made the Devils Hole Pupfish so special is that it was classified decades ago by federal scientists as a unique species and, because they only exist in Devils Hole, an endangered species, under federal law.

   Brown, in fact, devotes his first chapter to tracing the story of how the Devils Hole Pupfish was first discovered (in 1891), how the tiny fish were studied and classified by early scientists, and how it came to be formally considered a unique species.

   The latter point was particularly important when, in 1952, President Harry S. Truman added 40 acres of the Amargosa Desert known as Ash Meadows, which included Devils Hole, to Death Valley National Monument (now known as Death Valley National Park). The move provided permanent protection from development and other threats to the site.

   Brown, who writes scientific information in easy-to-understand terms, describes Devils Hole as a kind of funnel-shaped fissure or crack in the ground that is a window into a deep subterranean lake. At about 45 feet down, the opening is filled with warm water from the lake.

   The water in the 10-feet wide and 60-foot-deep crack, which is a constant 92 degrees Fahrenheit, and serves as the entire universe for the pupfish. A rock ledge in the fissure, barely below the water line, serves as its sole spawning area and the algae that grows in the hole is one of its main food sources (along with insects).

   Brown also describes the myriad threats the pupfish have faced over the decades, which range from numerous plans to pump groundwater from the area’s underground aquifer to use for agriculture and development, which would have caused drop in the water levels at Devils Hole, to disastrous government agency efforts designed to try to help the fish, which ended up actually killing them (such as in 2004 when a flash flood knocked measurement equipment into the hole and killed more than a third of the known fish population).

   The low point in the pupfish population came in 2013, when a population count found only 35 of the species still alive in the hole (just 20 years earlier there were between 400 and 500).

   Fortunately, the population has rebounded in more recent years and, according to Brown, have numbered between 135 and 185. The fish, he noted, is not yet in the clear but efforts to preserve their habitat and the species seem to be helping.

   Devils Hole is located about 25 miles south of Lathrop Wells, off Nevada State Route 373. To reach it, head south on Highway 95 through Tonopah. Lathrop Wells is located another two hours south of Tonopah on 95.

   For more information, go to: www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/devils-hole.htm.

  “Devils Hole Pupfish: The Unexpected Survival of an Endangered Species in the Modern American West,” by Kevin C. Brown is published by the University of Nevada Press and available in local bookstores or can be ordered on the University of Nevada Press website, https://www.unpress.nevada.edu/.

Eastern California's Alabama Hills Offer Incredible Scenery and Hollywood History

 

At Alabama Hills, you can walk in the footsteps of John Wayne, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Bacon, Clint Eastwood, Roy Rogers, and dozens of other film and TV stars.

   The 18,610-acre national scenic area, located about 2.5 miles west of the community of Lone Pine, California via Whitney Portal Road, is the place where more than 400 movies and countless television shows have been filmed since 1920.

   The first known cinematic effort to use the hills as a backdrop was “The Roundup,” a comedian Fatty Arbuckle silent movie filmed in 1920. More recent films and shows that incorporated the area’s mountain/high desert scenery have included “Gladiator” (2000), “Iron Man” (2008), “Django Unchained” (2012), and “Man of Steel” (2013).

   Of course, there is a reason Alabama Hills is such a popular location for directors and cinematographers: its location relatively close to Los Angeles and Hollywood and the fact it can look like so many other parts of the world.

   In those hundreds of films, the hills have been a stand-in for the Middle East, frontier Arizona and New Mexico, ancient Rome, distant deserts, and other planets. With its unusual geology, consisting of various types of volcanic rock, Alabama Hills can be repurposed to serve as a substitute for places all over the world.

   Geologists describe the distinctive boulders and rocks of the hills as weathered granite that has been shaped by wind and erosion. The result is a spectacular landscape filled with smooth, almost organic-looking boulders, arches, spires, and corridors, with the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada range in the distance.

   The geologic features of the area, including the formation of the Sierra Nevada range, were shaped by uplifting that occurred 100 million years ago.

   At about the 2.7-mile point from Lone Pine, the road forks, with Whitney Portal Road continuing directly west and Movie Road branching (on the right) in a slightly northwestern direction. The latter leads to the bulk of the best boulders and formations.

   For example, at nearly the one-mile mark (from the fork), you can hike to the east of the road into what is called the Lone Ranger Canyon. This was the place where many of the adventures of the famed TV lawman were filmed in the 1950s. A little farther to the north of the canyon is where parts of the film, Django Unchained, were shot.

   At the 1.5-mile mark (from the fork), you reach a sharp curve and to the left is the short Arch Loop trail, which leads to several of the area’s most prominent rock arches, including Mobius Arch.

   Southwest of the trail are the sites where several other well-known movies were filmed, including “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Gunga Din” (1939), and “Tremors” (1990).

   If you continue for several more miles on Movie Road, you will end up back on US 395.

   For those with more time to explore, overnight camping is available at the Tuttle Creek Campground, with 80 sites, located south of the hills via Horseshoe Meadows Road.

   As for why a cluster of picturesque rocks and boulders in eastern California is named Alabama Hills, according to historians, among the first non-Native American visitors to the area were prospectors who staked mining claims in the Owens Valley area.

   Many were sympathetic to the Confederate side during the Civil War and named the hills after a Confederate warship, the Alabama, that had sunk a Union man-of-war ship, the Hatteras, off the coast of Texas in January 1863.

   In more recent years, there have been efforts to rename the hills, which were known by the native Paiute people as “Payahuunadü,” meaning “the land of flowing water.” While the Bureau of Land Management is still pondering its next step, many believe the site should be renamed to its original Paiute name, rather than continue using a name with racist connotations.

   For information on the name controversy, go to: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/california-eastern-sierras-reckon-with-racist-history-renaming-alabama-hills.

   For more general information about the area, go to: www.blm.gov/visit/alabama-hills-national-scenic-area.