27 miles southeast of Elko and 5 miles south of Carlin, Nevada is the turnoff to the ghost town of Palisade. Palisade was built around the Central Pacific Railroad's Eureka and Palisade spur, a narrow gauge rail built from 1873-1875 stretching 87 miles south to Eureka and carrying ore from Eureka to Palisade where the bullion travelled west.

Palisade had its share of disasters: floods in 1910 destroyed much of the town. A train wreck in Palisade on August 12, 1939 killed 24 and injured 121 of the 220 passengers and crew. The emperor of Japan was said to have survived the wreck from his seat in the fourth car.

The Eureka and Palisade Railroad pulled out in 1939 but at one point some 290 people lived in Palisade which in the 1870s was known as the toughest town west of Chicago. Palisade had 3 saloons, a dry goods store, two grocery stores and a sporting house. Easterners wanted to see the wild west and the residents of Palisade gave them what they wanted. Train passengers watched in horrified fascination as cowboy Frank West shot "Dandy" Alvin Kittleby. When the train left the station, Frank, Dandy and the townfolk had a good laugh.

The laughter of Frank, Dandy and the good folk of Palisade has long passed away and many of the townsfolk, railroaders and miners now rest in the cemetary Richard Miner found covered in sagebrush nine months ago. In fact, the sagebrush had all but erased the grave sites in the Palisades cemetary. The first grave Miner cleared belonged to a child. He knew by the small circle of stones uncovered, a child rested there. Two adult graves with their own stone circles have been revealed on either side of the child. "It was sad to see," said Miner, "and I could make it better, so I did." Miner doesn't want to change anything; he just wants to clean it up. He doesn't know how many sagebrushes he's pulled by hand with a nylon strap before planting blue grass in its place. Miner estimates at least 80 souls rest in the cemetary.

A woman living in New Mexico contacted Miner through his website, Northern Nevada Ghost Towns, to let him know she has family buried in the cemetary and that she'd attended the now nonexistent school house in Palisades. Mr. Frank R. Sexton (whose grandfather, Charles Sexton, was the last general manager for the Eureka-Palisade Railroad and whose father John F. Sexton was a Eureka District Judge) and his brother, John G. Sexton own the 160-acre Palisade town site and Mr. Sexton isn't certain if any Sextons rest in the cemetary which belongs to Eureka County. Frank Sexton is "glad to see somebody is taking care of some of the history of the old West. It's very important. I'd hate to see it lost."

Some 15 people have come out to see Miner's restoration work. Rita Stitzel of the neighboring Palisade Ranch thinks "it's remarkable that he would take it upon himself to do the work." Miner told Rita Stitzel he was restoring the cemetary in recognition of his father's sister, Mattie, who drowned at age two while the family took supplies up the Humboldt River to put on the train at Palisade "I saw this man at the cemetary and went up to see what was going on. He's made a tremendous improvement, he's marked the unmarked graves, and made little crosses. He cleaned it all up and painted it. Palisade has become a forgotten entity." Perhaps 10 people have been buried there in the 30 years Ms. Stitzel's had the Palisade Ranch. She said family members occasionally visit and 4-H children come out on Memorial Day to "kind of clean it up" but Richard "cleaned the whole thing" when "he could be sitting home watching t.v." and she's happy to see him get recognition. Her ranch hand has helped Miner find and uncover graves evident only as little depressions in the earth. Miner has planted flower bulbs, irises and tulips, and says by Memorial Day the cemetary will be a more pleasant place.

Although Miner didn't ask for donations, Newmont has donated steel posts for a gateway, T.I.C. donated iron for the crosses Miner made and Neil Johnson donated the wire to put around the cemetary. Miner also thanks his mother for leaving him a sum of money "to do exactly what I'm doing, making it a better place for family and friends to come visit and pay their respects."

Miner works 7 days on and 2 days off as a Newmont mechanic on tracks and track vehicles  "I'm a child of the earth," Miner says. "and I believe in giving back what we get, not in money, but in service. Nothing comes out of the earth that the mother earth doesn't give us. I'm an old miner. I've mined my whole life, and I've seen waste and destruction. If we all do some little thing to the cemetary, we give something back to  the land we've taken from." Miner plans to tackle other cemetaries and clean them up as well. "We ought to make happy tracks," says Miner.

When he finishes with the Palisades Cemetary, he'd like to help restore Maiden's Grave and the nearby Indian cemetary not to mention the lost graveyards of the Chinese who built the railroads and were buried apart. Miner characterizes himself as the "spirit of all the miners that have passed before me and left their mark on the land. " He sees himself as part of "an endless list of those in unmarked cemetaries," "men, women and children" who "lay in unmarked graves with no one to honor them or pull the sage brush form their resting places. I want to be one of many that want to take the time to set it right, pull and burn the brush, stand the head stones back up and put up markers where now there are none."

Miner invites people to come out to take a look at what's been done and write him at irdrilldoctor@msn.com. He promises he'll do his best to answer everyone.