Ophir and Mercur

Yesterday a group of us decided to visit the old mining town of Ophir Utah. Research before the trip told us that as well as several old abandoned buildings there were a handful of residents that didn’t really like visitors.

We drove up through the town and noticed that many of the buildings were located on private property with weathered ‘NO TRESPASSING’ and ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ sights nailed to just about every tree and fence. We continued past the town and went about a mile or so more up the canyon before coming to a stream that ran across the dirt road. Not wanting to chance getting stuck, we pulled the car to the side of the road to have a beer.

Not long afterward a white truck pulled up and the driver told us that we should probably go up the road a bit to drink, as the sheriff would be along shortly and we were on a county road. We told him we were a little hesitant to take the car across the stream so he offered to drive us up to the end of the canyon, another 3 miles or so.

I was all for it, but Steve was a little afraid that the man would take us to some secret murder hut in the woods where he would make couches out of us. I reminded him that nothing ventured was nothing gained and he gave in. We grabbed a handful of beers, jumped in the back of his truck and headed up the canyon. When we got there I took the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures which you can see here.

Afterward he told us that if we were looking for ghost towns the best we could do was visit the Mercur cemetery about 10 minutes south of Ophir on the main road. We thanked him for the ride and he drove off.

Steve didn’t want to go to the cemetery because he was late for something or another but we put it to a vote. 4-1 in favor of the cemetery so off we went. The cemetery was a short hike up a small hill covered with Juniper bushes. Most of the graves were fenced off but some weren’t. I’m curious to know why someone took the time to fence them off if they weren’t going to do all of them…

There was only one headstone with any writing on it and it was faded and hard to read. I could barely make out ‘Beloved Annie C Jones (I think its Jones) Born 9-25-1897 Died 10-1898′. The rest had markers but not even a trace of engraving to denote who may have been laid to rest there.

It wasn’t very creepy, but it was sad in a way. Who was still alive to remember those that were buried in this remote part of the desert?