Turn Here!
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Just south of Tooele, then Stockton, watch for the one sign that points east to Mercur and turn right.
Rush, Rush Baby
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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The view west to the Rush Valley from the parking lot at the bottom of the hill in Mercur.
Rabbit, Rabbit
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Rabbit Brush is as prolific as Sagebrush in the area. Natives have reported that it is a healing plant and that the seeds and leaves are edible.
The Plaque
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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This is the only marker at the Cemetery. It was put up by the mining company who own the land just above the graveyard. They appear to maintain the parking lot and the graveyard by picking up trash and maintaining the picket fences around most of the graves.
The Trail
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Babs is handicapped but the path up to the graveyard is not far and not hard to walk. It would be difficult for someone in a wheelchair to have access because of small rocky areas in places on the path. But with friends, it's doable.
Juniper Or Cedar?
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Juniper trees abound in the hills around Mercur. They are also known as cedar trees. They are a native plant and are the most predominate single species of trees in Utah. The blue hard ‘berries’ are eaten by jackrabbits and deer eat the foliage if they have no other feed. There is no better campfire than that made of Juniper wood-the fragrance is amazing. The wood is also used for fence posts out west because the plant wood is highly decay resistant.
Liken' Lichen
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Lichen are found all over the rocks leading to the gravesites and on the rocks of the graves themselves at Mercer. The colorful 'crust-like' things look like scabs or plants, but they aren't either. Lichen are a partnership between a fungus and an algae. They come in many colors and can be used as natural dyes. They are bitter to eat and some are toxic to humans but can be used in perfumes, cosmetics, sunscreens and even as a replacement for hops in brewing beer. They are very sensitive to air pollution and don't grow too close to humans.
Gold And Poisoned Dirt
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Mercur became famous in 1891 for being the site of the first successful use of cyanide to extract gold and is still the most successful way to get gold out of hard rock around the world. It’s poisonous and is banned in many countries. To the untrained eye, it's all just rocks.
No Jews Left Flowers
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Someone went through the graveyard recently and put a silk flower on all the visible graves. This person or persons weren’t Jewish because flowers in the Jewish tradition on graves means nothing to the dead. Instead you place a small stone that costs nothing and place it on a grave to let the one that’s passed know that they’ve made an impact on you. Spend the money you would have spent on flowers and give it to charity in the memory of the deceased.
The Cemetary
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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The marker to the cemetery has been kept up and supported by a rock cairn. Originally the town of Mercur was known as Lewiston when gold was discovered near Cedar Fort. A small gold rush began in the 1870’s but the ore gave out and Lewiston itself became a ghost town by 1880.
Pickets
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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At least half of the graves at the Mercur cemetery are surround by picket fences. It is said that until the introduction of advertising on fences in the 1980's all cricket fields were surround by picket fences. This gave rise to the expression ‘rattling the pickets’ for a ball hit firmly into the fence.
Christmas Time
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Visitors come to the graveyard at all times of the year. Here there was Christmas tinsel that had been tied up along the pickets surround Annie’s grave. The biggest holiday in Mercur was Columbus Day because many of the miners who had come to work the gold were from Italy. Mercur even had its own band that performed for the Columbus Day parade down the main street and for special occasions. Maybe the band played funeral dirges, too?
Made In China
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Most of the graves had been decorated with small plastic ‘Made in China’ flags. They looked newer so we guessed that they had been placed there for Veterans Day within the past year. Odd, but there’s no history of Veterans being buried in the cemetery.
Keeping The Graves
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Decorative ribbon on one of the unpainted picketed graves. None of the wooden pickets are original to the site. The phrase 'picket fence' in our language refers also to 'text without spaces between words'. In Latin it refers to documents lacking spaces and punctuation. We’re pretty sure the site is being kept up by the Barrick Gold Corp. who owns the land and the mine. They are out of Canada. Canadians play cricket.
Rock Lines
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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The early graves where/are marked with lichen covered rocks. The fencing has been added at a later time by keepers of the cemetery. The silk flowers were probably added by visitors in the last year since we've visited the site.
Up The Canyon
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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The view east towards the old gold mine, now fenced off and closed to workers. Barrick Gold Corp. is the largest gold mining company in the world and have mines in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Zambia. In 2013 they produced 7.2 million ounces of gold. Mercur is not currently being mined.
Most of the graves in Mercur are not marked with headstones. It’s likely there were never engraved stones used as markers because there were no stone masons who had the tools to carve the names of the dead onto rock. Or, the markers were all wooden and decayed in the last 100+ years from the individual graves. One is not supposed to walk on top of the graves of others as it is disrespectful to the dead.
Quietville
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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On a quiet day all you can hear from the top of the hill where the cemetery lies is the screech of red tail hawks and the breezes through the cedar trees. Other days you hear the dirt bike and ATV engines from both sides of the hill. Out to the west and into Rush Valley you can look up and see massive migrations of birds in the spring and fall. Rush Valley is one of five major fly-ways in the U.S. where birds travel from north and south following the seasons.
Old Lake Bonneville
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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It's hard to know how many men, women and children are actually buried in Mercur. Folks over the years have kept the rocks around what is thought to be the original graves. These rocks are all remnants of the mud left under the great waters of pre-historic Lake Bonneville that once covered the whole area and now is simply the Great Salt Lake further north.
Boom And Busts
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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There is the graveyard and also a town called Mercur. The town itself is up the canyon and is fenced off from the public. The first town there burned to the ground in 1903 but was rebuilt and in its heyday had 5,000 residents living in wooden homes and cabins, and tents. The gold rush has come in waves since the 1800’s and Mercur is a great example of the boom and bust seen in so many Western towns.
Arsenic
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Mercur is not only famous for its gold deposits, but for a beautiful crystal found in the mines called ‘Lorandite’. This thallium arsenic sulfosalt mineral is pretty rare and found in Macedonia, Tajikistan, Switzerland, Iran, Wyoming, Nevada and in the Guizhou Province in China. It was first discovered in Macedonia in 1894 and was named after a Hungarian physicist named Lorand Eotovos.
Don't Stand At My Grave
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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The view from the ground up at Mercur cemetery.
Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep
BY Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle Autumn rain
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quite birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die
Campfires
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Because Mercur is reportedly a place for talking to ghosts, many people come at night to try and commune with the dead. There is evidence in many places of campfires that have burned at night surrounding the graveyard.
Exploring
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Bella and Makayla exploring amongst the Junipers atop the hill at the Mercur graveyard, spring 2015.
Gravestones
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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We think this is an original grave market because the stone is so large. There aren’t any other stones this big up on this hill and it’s shaped like a head stone. There are scratches on it but no names or carvings.
Pop Tops
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Many folks over the decades have come to visit the dead of Mercur. Here's a pop-top lid (they stopped making pull tops in the mid-1970s) and a piece of metal from even earlier than the '70's.
The Ferryman
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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There are coins all over grave stones at Mercur. Soldiers leave coins on graves to give a message to fellow soldiers that ‘they’ll buy them a round when they see them in heaven' and to help pay for upkeep of the graveyard. The Greeks of ancient times told the story of Charon, the ferryman of Hades. He required one coin to ferry your loved ones soul across the river Styx. Back then people would put a coin on the eyes or in the mouth of the dead person to 'pay the ferryman'. If you don’t pay, you wander the shores of the river Styx for 100 years.
Back To Annie
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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These are coins left on Annie’s grave. The marker has all but been destroyed except for the 'B' that can be seen here. It's believed Annie C. Jones was born in 1887 and died in 1898. Every time we visit her grave we leave gifts and every time there are new toys and different coins present. Hopefully the keepers of the grave (self-appointed or paid) collect the coins and use them to pay for paint for the fences around @ 20 of the 30 or so burial sites.
Moopers
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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These two blue X marks are the only signs of graffiti we’ve ever seen at Mercur. There is rarely any trash around other than that which might have blown in on the winds. The place is kept pristine by folks like us who pick up MOOP (burningmanspeak for 'matter out of place') trash.
Laughing Annie
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Close up baby doll gift. This is a doll that's recently been left here because there is no weathering about the plastic parts. Annie likes dolls and reportedly people have heard her laughing from her grave-sounds that a child at play would make.
Tea Party
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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This time we left Annie a tiny ceramic tea set for her to play with. Mikayla arranged all the toys that had been left as of late around the tea set so that Annie could enjoy a tea party.
B & B
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Babs and Bella visiting Annie's grave.
Wyld Place
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Across the street from the Mercur graveyard is a Wyld place-an unofficial gun range littered with thousands of shell casings from handguns, shot guns and rifles.
String Of Hearts
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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As we left the graveyard we noticed an old weathered plastic bead necklace of hearts strung over the pickets on a grave.
Modern Man
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by Babs Delay and Bella Hall
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Off-road bikes go racing up the path to the cemetery.
