TOOELE — The graveyard sits on a narrow strip of land, precariously perched between a new housing development and the southern tip of Main Street.
Well, what's left of the graveyard.
As cemeteries everywhere brace for their biggest day of the year tomorrow, it will be more a subdued Memorial Day out here on the outskirts of Tooele.
Three weeks ago, a backhoe pulled up and exhumed the remains in a dozen of the graves in the Tooele City Pioneer Cemetery.
The skeletal remains of 10 people were bagged by archaeologists and hustled away to be studied in labs in Salt Lake.
Two of the graves they uncovered were empty — a little fact that ought to pick things up around here next Halloween.
Maybe they knew the backhoe was coming.
They dug up the graves!
Can they do that?
Is that legal?
The Tooele City Pioneer Cemetery's roots date back to the first death in the area sometime in 1850, shortly after the first Mormon settlers arrived to civilize and cultivate the valley south of the Great Salt Lake on orders from Brigham Young.
They settled at the bottom of a river running out of the Oquirrh mountains in an area that is about a mile due south of what has become the city center of Tooele.
When death happened to those early settlers, as it will, they did the burials near where they lived.
It wasn't until 1867 that the present-day Tooele cemetery opened. Some people transferred their ancestor's remains from the old cemetery to the new cemetery; others did not. At least 39 early pioneers — whose names are on a marker in the old cemetery — were left behind to rest in peace.
Or so they thought.
The problem, as always: unforeseen developments.
How could pioneers in the mid-1800's have known about TV cables and power lines? And how could they have even dreamed that their little graveyard would be in the way when the highway department wanted to widen Main Street?
But whereas developers and road construction crews in other cities come upon old graveyards and, for a variety of good, prudent reasons, give the dead a wide berth, that did not happen here.
Not only did they dig up the graves, they carried away the bones.
As we speak, lab technicians are investigating those bones for insight into how people lived in Tooele 150 years ago. They want to know what kind of work they did, what they ate, whether they brushed their teeth, what they died from and, like the rest of us, why in the world they named their town "Tooele."
If the bones were older or of a different culture — Anasazi's, perhaps — preservationists and environmentalists would be up in arms.
If the bones were newer, living relatives would take over the fight.
Can you imagine someone shaving off 15 feet of the Salt Lake City Cemetery so they could lay down TV cable?
As it is, no attorneys, no lawsuits, not even any threats of lawsuits.
When the lab workers are finished, the plan is to place the bones back in the sliver of land the cemetery still claims, bordered by Main Street, Settlement Canyon Road and Canyon Rim Estates.
Canyon Rim is a new stucco home development that includes an entry road called Memory Lane, which connects with — I am not making this up — Iron Rod Road.
It is a straight shot from Iron Rod Road down Memory Lane to the cemetery.
By the way, as to the matter of exactly whose bones have been dug up, nobody's sure.
Nobody living, anyway.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.