An Unsolved Mystery

An Unsolved Mystery. . In 1863, a short distance from here, seven passengers on the Overland Stage were murdered during a robbery. The victims were buried on this hill. James Thompson, a station guard, placed the blame for the crime on the infamous outlaw, Jack Slade., Slade came west as Division Superintendent for Ben Halladay’s Overland Mail. In 1862, Slade relocated the North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers portion of the mail route to this point, supervising the construction of the stage stations including the Rock Point or Almond Station within sight of this cemetery. Slade’s life is recounted in numerous history books and two Hollywood films. He abandoned his job with the Overland Mail Company and turned outlaw. The hard-drinking Slade was lynched in Virginia City, Montana in 1864., Humorist Mark Twain recounted his meeting with Slade in his classic book, Roughing It, , “He was so friendly an so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified their children with”, Slade’s involvement in the murders near here was never proven. The case remains unsolved. There were no surviving witnesses and the dead have not yielded their secrets.