LeBeau Gravesite
A familiar sight to travelers across Highway 50, this lonely gravesite sits in the middle of Fourmile Flat, an unforgiving alkali plain. The story goes that three sisters (Jennie, age 9, Louise, age 6, and Emma, age 3) died from diptheria in 1865 and were buried out here. According to research done in 1983, the girls were daughters of Michael & Mary Louise LeBeau, French-Canadians who settled at Ellsworth in the 1860s. In the late 1800s, the grave was cared for by an unknown prospector, and later by Charles L. Benadum, who operated a freight station at nearby Sand Springs in the 1910s.
In 1940, a cloudburst struck the area, destroying the grave and unearthing the remains of two of the sisters. They were subsequently reburied by Sam Taylor and William Manley of Fallon, and a new cross put in place. By the 1970s, it too fell into disrepair, and a new picket fence and cross reading "Two pioneer children. Known only to God." was erected by R.M. McAlexander of Reno. By the next decade, Johnnie Johnson (who conducted the 1983 research) arrived and again rehabbed the site. Sometime (presumably after Johnson's work), another name was added: Wilson Turner, age 3, who died in 1864, but little else is known of his story. As of 2021, the marker commemorating the LeBeau sisters is missing, and only that for Turner remains.
