Goldfield Elks Cemetery

Esmeralda County

This cemetery is specifically for the burial of Elks Lodge members. Most of the gravestones are gone now. They are memorialized with the generic white crosses and those little gray, metal plaques to designate that someone is buried in that spot. There are a few, more current burials here. But I limited the burials in the photos to 50 years old or older for historical purposes. The first Elks burial here was in 1905. The man was obviously from a different lodge, because the Goldfield Elks did not form until 1907. Here is the history of the Goldfield Elks Lodge. It was formed in May of 1907 as Goldfield Lodge No. 1072. The first Secretary of the lodge was Arthur Barnes. He was a long serving secretary of this lodge and is buried in this cemetery. In 1911, the Goldfield Elks Lodge had 357 members. That is more than the entire population of Goldfield today. I am not sure when this lodge closed. It was very common for fraternal lodges to open up in the booming mining camps, and then close as the boom died and the residents left for other places.