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.
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