Welcome to the Nevada City Cemetery database website!

Making History Personal: The Nevada City Cemetery Project

Our historic cemeteries reflect the continuity of community and family. But what becomes of the cemetery when few if any families are left to care for it? George Eliot wrote "Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them." The Nevada City historic cemetery is just such a place where shifting population has left its ancestors and their home to the ravages of time.

In 2014, The Extreme History Project initiated a project to map, document and assess the needs of the historic Nevada City Cemetery. Nevada City and its cemetery are just a stone's throw from historic Virginia City, Montana, the territorial capital from 1865-1875. The rise of Nevada City coincides with this history of Virginia City and the early history of the state. Preliminary fieldwork began during the summer of 2014 when 200+ unmarked graves were determined. Our project then digitally mapped the cemetery providing a new map (the original plat map has disappeared) which included the unmarked graves that had never before been documented. We also assessed the condition of the extant headstones and completed comprehensive documentation forms for each gravesite.

Through researching the unmarked graves, we were able to provide a memorial plaque listing the known names of those buried in unmarked graves. In the future, we hope to provide a marker for the unmarked graves themselves to insure no accidental or purposeful disturbance.

Finally, we created this online database to provide access to all the information we gathered at the Nevada City Cemetery. Here you can browse through the headstones and learn about the people who reside there.

We hope you find it useful!

The Extreme History Project