Sunset Park is well known to all denizens of the Las Vegas area. It may not compare to Manhattan’s Central Park, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got. The park is visited by thousands of people each year and hosts various festivals and large events. While on the surface that is all well enough, Sunset Park may have a few skeletons hiding in its closet, or under the grass.

A rumor floating about the web claims that the land eventually used for Sunset Park was originally a cemetery. The legend goes that there were between 200 and 2,000 people buried there and, for reasons unknown, were just built over when construction of the park began. Presumably, they are still there just beneath the surface. To determine if there is any truth to this, let’s look back at the history of the park.

The native Paiutes who originally called our valley home used the area that is now Sunset Park to conduct trade up to one thousand years ago, but the land was never fully settled by them and held no ceremonial significance. The first modern settlement on the track of land was in 1909 when John F. Miller bought it and turned it into a ranch. For the next thirty years Miller Ranch grew hay and raised horses, turkey, chickens, goats, and geese. While Miller did live on the ranch with his family during those years, the ranch was not his main occupation. Miller built and owned Hotel Nevada, one of the first casinos in Las Vegas. In the 1930s, Miller hired a man named Bert Gibbs to oversee the daily operations of the ranch. Bert and his wife, Celia, lived on site during that time.

In 1939, Miller Ranch was sold to J. Kell Houssels, Sr., who also owned the Las Vegas Club Casino. Houssels turned the ranch into the Vegas Stock Farm, where he bred and trained thoroughbred horses. A number of champion racehorses were raised there and although Houssels was a successful gaming pioneer in our city, his racehorse farm was his life’s passion.

In 1961 Houssels was eyeing retirement and tried to turn the farm into a golf resort but could not get the approval from the state for the needed water rights. In 1963 he ended up selling the ranch to Wilbur Clark, owner of the Desert Inn Casino, and few unnamed investors. It is unclear what they planned to do with the land, but tuning it into a cemetery is quite unlikely. Nothing happened with the land over the next four years and the old structures were left abandoned. A neighboring rancher, Mary Gravelle Habbart, became the unofficial caretaker of the land and did her best to protect it from vandalism and destruction. It was mostly due to Habbart’s efforts that Clark County eventually purchased the area in 1967 and turned into Las Vegas’s first city park. The rest, as they say, is history.

It seems very unlikely that a cemetery, especially what would have been a fairly large one for the time, would have ever been in this location. A lamed racehorse or two or some of the previous farm animals could be buried somewhere, but on close inspection the story does not hold up.

So where did the rumor come from? Like most urban legends of this sort, it is anyone’s guess. However, this is probably the best answer. It is very possible that it could be a case of name confusion. There was at some point a cemetery in North Las Vegas known as “The Sunset Garden of Memories,” located across the street from the historic Woodlawn Cemetery. The property was abandoned during the 1970s and fell into a state of disrepair. In 1994 the city disinterred all 117 people buried there and relocated them to Palm Memorial Park on South Eastern Avenue—just a block down the street from Sunset Park. This is more than likely what distorted into the story as it’s now told.

Even though Sunset Park was never a graveyard it turns out that there was some truth to the story after all. The true story is even almost as morbid as the rumor; digging up a cemetery is gruesome business, not to mention headstones may have been stolen from it prior to the move (according to an online source). It is our prayer that those 117 soles are now at peace in their new resting place. But who knows, maybe they decided to take up residence in Sunset Park during their journey from north town? The legend of Sunset Park once being a cemetery is still hotly debated, to read some of the commentary click here and scroll to the comments from this October, 2008 article penned by Eric Miller.