Please remember to exercise caution when exploring Nevada's Ghost Towns & Mining Camps. Open shafts, drifts going into mountainsides, and old buildings, are all DANGEROUS. Be aware of your surroundings, and let someone know where you are, especially if your plans change.

Gravelly Ford

DIRECTIONS: Located 2 miles east of Beowawe.

"Gravelly Ford is more of a historical site than a town, although a post office did function here from February 22,1869, until January 31, 1870. It is alleged that here, long before any settlement formed, James Reed, a member of the ill-fated Donner Party, killed John Snyder, also a member. However, there is controversy as to whether Gravelly Ford was really the site of the murder. Some accounts place the event at Iron Point, near Battle Mountain.

Probably the most interesting and controversial part of Gravelly Ford's history is the Maiden's Grave. There are two stories about the origin of the Maiden's Grave. The more popular version is that a young girl, Lucinda Duncan, got sick, died, and was buried in the valley along the emigrant trail, near Gravelly Ford, heading toward Beowawe. When the Central Pacific Railroad was being built, it was discovered that the tracks would destroy the grave. The body was moved and re-interred a short distance away on a small hill. The new grave was marked by a large wooden cross. Members of the railroad building crew began to maintain the grave, and a tradition was born. The controversy centers on the age of the deceased woman. The above version says she was fourteen, while the version related by Iva Robertson Rader, granddaughter of Lucinda Duncan, says she was seventy! Mrs. Rader states that her grandmother was born in 1793 in Virginia and died at Gravelly Ford of an aneurism of the heart, with most of her children and grandchildren standing nearby. I leave it up to the reader to decide which version is more plausible.

Gravelly Ford also had a history of conflict with Indians. Twenty-three immigrants were murdered nearby during the Indian troubles of the 1850s and 1860s. A small camp did form at Gravelly Ford in the 1860s during the construction of the Central Pacific. In 1880 the camp had a population of 42 and supported a store, a restaurant, and a telegraph station. Today only wood scraps and depressions mark the site."

 

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