PIONEER LUCINDA PARKER DUNCAN and her family were drawn to the gold and silver boom in Nevada in 1863, but she never had time to make the territory home.
After a long journey from Missouri along the California Trail, the 71-year-old woman died of a heart attack shortly after making it into modern-day north-central Nevada, near Beowawe.
Nearly 140 years later Eureka County locals consider her one of their own, and they are asking the federal government for her grave. In fact, they want control of the whole Maiden's Grave Cemetery that sprung up around her.
After a two-year effort, Congress may be about to oblige. It seems a classic Nevada tale of locals battling the feds is slowly winding its way through the halls of the U.S. Capitol.
"The county government has always felt that our cemetery was very local, and that the federal government should not have jurisdiction over a cemetery where local residents are buried," said former Eureka County Commissioner Sandy Green, who started the effort to win control of Maiden's Grave.
Since 2000, Nevada lawmakers have been pushing for a bill that would transfer two cemeteries from federal to local control, at no charge. By law, agencies are not allowed to hand over public land for free unless Congress approves the deal.
It's "unconscionable" that a community would have to buy their ancestors back from the federal government, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said.
So he drafted a bill that would transfer the 10-acre Maiden's Grave Cemetery, now under Bureau of Land Management control, to Eureka County.
The bill also enlarges the Kingston Cemetery in Lander County. The town's 1.25-acre burial plot is already owned by the town of Kingston -- townsfolk bought it for $500 a few years ago. But locals want room to bury future generations, so the legislation would transfer to the county 8.25 acres of U.S. Forest Service land that surrounds the original cemetery.
The bill appears stalled. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the issue in May, but it's not likely to win final congressional approval this year. Still, Reid and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who introduced a House version, vow to push it until it passes.
The cemetery controversy stems from the 1800s when settlers began burying their dead in the Nevada soil -- long before federal agencies claimed the land under their jurisdiction.
Today it is a subdued example of the state's "Sagebrush Rebellion," which has long simmered between the federal agencies that control roughly 85 percent of Nevada and the locals -- traditionally farmers and ranchers in rural counties -- who live and work there.
"You know how important cemeteries are -- they just wanted it under their control," said former Lander County Commissioner Cheryl Lyngar. "We really had a lot of cooperation from our congressional delegation. They have been very helpful."
Lucinda Duncan could not have foreseen the trouble her resting spot would cause -- or the myth that attached itself to her grave.
Duncan's death was chronicled in the journal of James Yager, a traveler in her party of 60 oxen teams and wagons. "Her relatives took her death very hard," the journal says. "All of her children and grandchildren were present except a grandson who is in the confederate army."
A plaque at the gravesite tells what may be the rest of the story. In 1906 Southern Pacific railroad laborers came upon the grave in the path of the rail bed. They moved whatever was left of her grave a short distance, it is believed, to the spot where she rests today.
Perhaps the railroad men were the source of the cemetery's name. Having come upon Duncan's remains, they may have "romanticized" that she had been a beautiful young woman who died a tragic death along the trail, said Jan Petersen of the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko.
"They didn't realize she was a grandma," Petersen said.
Less is known about the Kingston Cemetery, which has long been in disrepair. Sagebrush and native grass have taken over. Many of the markers are gone.
"We know we've got a Civil War veteran parked there," said Jim Kielhack, 77, who handles most of the real estate in town and who would like to be buried in the cemetery. "But we don't know where all the bodies are."
In Kingston, population 100, some thought was given to buying the 8.75 acres. But "the town budget just couldn't handle it," said Kingston town board member Hillary White.
The locals said they just want to know their final resting place will be in the arms of locals, not some distant federal bureaucrat.
"They want to have the cemetery be a part of the community, and not just some piece of ground where they can put someone to rest," Lander County Commissioner Mickey Yarbro said. "They want it to be a part of the town."
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