They came from China in the late 1800s and followed the railroad east from San Francisco to Carlin.
Some worked the rails, some in restaurants. Some were merchants. Some cultivated gardens. Some washed clothes.Eventually, they died and were buried and were mostly forgotten for a century.
Then Randy Meierhoff started digging a hole in November for a septic tank behind his new doublewide mobile home.
"I was working with the tractor when I knocked off the first lid," he said.
By the time he was done, 13 bodies, all buried neatly in a row, were exhumed from Meierhoff's back yard and an adjoining property here, 22 miles west of Elko. One had become mummified.
They were taken to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, where physical anthropologists from the Smithsonian Institution are expected to examine the bodies and the few artifacts buried with them next month in hopes of learning more about the remains.
They will face an uphill battle, according to Sue Fawn Chung, associate professor of history at University of Nevada Las Vegas and an expert on the Chinese history of Nevada.
"We'll try to get some idea about these people. Dates, ages. We might be able to match with census data, but census records are very inadequate, especially in Carlin," she said.
Tim Murphy of the Elko Chapter of the Nevada Archaeological Association, said the lack of data is not surprising.
"The Chinese were so discriminated against there is not a lot of information," he said.
All 13 of the bodies are believed to be those of males and Murphy said they seemed to have been fairly healthy except for their teeth. One of the men wore dentures, another may have died of blood poisoning from a tooth infection.
None appeared to be particularly wealthy, but they were given proper burials in caskets ranging from fairly crude boxes to redwood.
"These guys weren't just thrown in the ground," Murphy said. "They were buried well."
Dimes and nickels dating from 1870 to 1907 were found in the graves along with bundles of stick matches, dishes, cut animal bones and even an opium pipe. The bodies lay in a northeast-southwest direction.
"We believe that the bodies were buried in accordance with Chinese geomancy - feng shui, wind and water - in which natural landmarks indicate the favorable direction to lay the coffin," Chung said.
Three bricks, the Chinese equivalent of a tombstone, were found - two next to bodies and one off to the side.
"I translated two of the names, but have not been able to locate anybody who is a descendant," Chung said.
Long-time Carlin residents recall Chinese people visiting the graves as late as the 1930s, said Ruth Hart of the archaeological association.
"We think there must be some relatives still around somewhere," she said. "We'd love to hear from them."
After visits stopped in the 1930s, sagebrush covered the cemetery and the land changed hands several times. Meierhoff had no idea what he was getting into when he started landscaping.
Once the scientists have learned what they can about the ancient settlers, the remains will be returned to the Carlin cemetery for burial, she said.
Despite stories of Chinese immigrants saving their money to be returned to their homeland after their deaths, that was not the case in Carlin.
"These were people who were buried intending to remain in Nevada forever," Chung said.
Carlin originally was known as Chinese Gardens because of the painstakingly maintained sites that included ponds for fish and small water-loving animals, Chung said.
Meierhoff's wife, Cammy, a former Carlin City Council member who was on the cemetery committee, said she hoped that the unknown settlers could be memorialized in the type of setting they enjoyed in life.
"Maybe working together we can get them reburied," she said. "I'm trying to treat them with as much respect as possible."