Dayton Cemetery
Lyon County, Lyon County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Dayton Cemetery. Founded in 1851, this is one of the oldest constantly maintained cemeteries in Nevada. The trail to the California Mother Lode passed directly in front and the wagon tracks can still be seen with careful observation.In 1849, the emigrants discovered gold in Gold Canyon and a trading post was opened here. In the 1850s, a permanent settlement was established. In 1861, the town was officially named Dayton in honor or John Day, a surveyor who agreed to plot the town on the condition the place would be named after him. That year, Lyman Crockett, later state treasurer, and Judge Calvin Hall located this cemetery. On December 9, 1861 Crockett dug the first grave. Two of his children are buried here. James Finney (“Old Virginny”) after whom Virginia City is named, is buried here. Many people buried here are Italian Americans, as this ethnic group dominated much of Dayton’s early history. Recognizing the potential of the land and the irrigating value of the Carson River, Italian Americans made this area the breadbasket for the Comstock.
Erected by The 1980 Restoration Committeemay Giometti, Chairman
The Story
Founded in 1851, Dayton Cemetery is one of the oldest continuously maintained burial grounds in Nevada, sited beside the emigrant trail to the California gold fields whose wagon ruts can still be traced nearby. The town grew from an 1849 gold discovery in Gold Canyon and was named in 1861 for surveyor John Day; that same year Lyman Crockett dug the cemetery's first grave. Among those buried here is James Finney, "Old Virginny," the namesake of Virginia City, alongside many Italian American families who farmed the Carson River bottoms to feed the Comstock.
Why it matters
The cemetery gathers in one place the emigrant trail, the first gold strike, and the immigrant farmers who fed the mines — a cross-section of how the West was peopled and provisioned.
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Related people
- · John Day
- · James Finney
- · Lyman Crockett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dayton Chinatown
Lyon County, NV
Dayton holds the site of Nevada's first Chinatown, settled as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China, Japan, and Korea crossed the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century — pushed by upheaval at home and pulled by the promise of gold and work in the Rocky Mountain West. In August 1857, Edward Rose hired Dayton's Chinese laborers to dig the four-mile Rose Ditch, carrying water from the Carson River to the placer miners at Gold Canyon. Facing steady discrimination but drawn by the work, they mined the canyon and settled along the river, and the community remained a vital hub for Chinese Americans in Nevada into the 1880s.
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