Up the road from our campground lies a very small cemetery. There are 9 souls buried there. A wrought iron fence painted black and tastefully ornate surrounds the graves, a gate leads the way in. The graves are marked by simple white crosses 24 inches high. Each one has 3 or 4 pink carnations wired to the white cross. The carnations are imitation, of course, but pretty in pink. No names, no dates, no writing whatsoever. Each grave is also outlined in local rocks, an orange one here, a gray there, one rounded, another jagged. They weigh anywhere from 10 lbs to 10 ounces each, random sizes and shapes, yet arranged roughly in a long oval somewhat the size of a human body. A wooden sign states that three of the graves are children, Blevins family by name. One of the graves holds a man “shot by the sheriff”. Additionally, there are 5 unnamed people buried there for a total of 9 souls altogether. No names, ages, or dates are available. There’s no mention of any history. It’s a very touching, moving, plot of land... odd, I think, for it to be located in a National Forest campground.
I mentioned in earlier entries surrounding Roosevelt Lake and the Tonto Basin that it has a wild and storied history, if not plain bloody. In addition to the native peoples who lived here over the centuries and millennia, outlaws, horse and cattle thieves, and various iterations of desperate folks have tried to scratch out a living here. There is a famous story here of a feud between two families. One family was a cattle rancher, the other sheep herders. That right there is enough for a feud in most areas, but this particular one was set off by cattle stealing. In this country the land can be as hostile and deadly as any human outlaw. It’s valleys and canyons are remote, desolate, and harbor any number of poisonous and deadly critters, not to mention spiny plants of every manner. The history tells that the families went back and forth stealing livestock and shooting at each other. They’d hide in the back country and bushwhack each other, leaving the bodies to the critters and the cactus. Apparently lots of lives were lost in this feud and ironically, the descendants of the original families still live and work around here. Books have been written about the feud and it remains a source of a sort of pride in Gila county. It’s not so much a tourist attraction, say, like Tombstone, that’s become a cartoon of itself. It’s more of a local story, a story-tradition that has become part of the local DNA...like cactus, scorpions, rattlers, water rights, mining, pueblo ruins, Apache revenge, and struggle against all odds.
Now, I don’t know this for certain. No one I’ve spoken to knows, either. But, the cemetery has a name. The wooden sign inside the wrought iron fence says plaintively, “The Blevins Cemetery”. The Blevins were principal characters in the bloody feud. Could it be that the three children buried there are Blevins? Were they killed in a raid? Did they perish all at once or over a period of a few years? Did the Spanish flu pandemic claim them? Could it also be that the man the sheriff shot and killed was a Blevins? Was it instead a killer who did away with the children? Or, did he perhaps kill the other nameless souls buried there? Was he simply a bad guy who crossed the sheriff the wrong way? It all begs the questions, “Who are these people laid to rest here in the Blevins Cemetery? Why are they nameless? Why are there no headstones with at least some kind of history attached? Why are they buried here where there is no evidence or history of a house or town being nearby? Once I stumbled upon a small family cemetery in the St Francois Mountains of Missouri. It was off, alone, overgrown with trees and shrubs in the middle of nowhere. But, at least there were names and dates and it appeared that the entire family perished within a week. I figure they perished from a disease making the rounds in the 1830’s ( the dates on the tombstones ) Here in this cemetery no information is given...nothing save the name of the cemetery...Blevins. No answers...just questions remain, along with the mortal remains.
This morning at 8:00 AM I stood outside the gate of the cemetery. I had a rake, a gasoline weed whacker, two gallons of gasoline. a bottle of water, and two plastic trash bags. The weeds in the plot were waist high. You couldn’t see the little white crosses any longer for the vine-like weeds growing up. Last evening as Diane and I walked by Diane mentioned that it would be a good gesture to clean up the plot. “Someone thought enough of these people to create the resting place and now no one takes care of it. It would be a good thing to do for Easter.” Diane said. I protested. “I’ve got more to do in our own campground than I can handle. Why don’t the camp hosts in this campground take care of it? No, I’m not gonna do it.” We walked quietly back to the motor home watching the sunset as we went. But as the evening and the night progressed I kept thinking about what I had said. It haunted me. I was being pretty selfish and I was not a little embarrassed by my attitude. And on Easter weekend to boot.
Sometime around noon today I finished cleaning up the little Cemetery. Diane had helped me rake the cut weeds. We nearly filled a trash dumpster with the weeds. I picked up dozens of stones from around the area and made the outlines of the little graves stand out a little more. It looked decent now, this little Blevins Cemetery. Rest in Peace, whomever you all are.