Mihiel Christopoulos

A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE PUBLISHED on October 6, 1906, in the Tonopah Miner referred to the dead man simply as a “Greek laborer, name unknown.” A similar article printed the same day in the Tonopah Bonanza called him an “unknown Greek.” Even the cemetery map recorded nothing more than the single word Greek.

It was only through the death certificate that a name emerged: Mihiel Christopoulos. He was killed on October 3, 1906, as the result of an accident, though even this name has never been confirmed through surviving records.

The circumstances of his death were violent and abrupt. Mihiel was riding a railway speeder—a small railcar used by track inspectors and work crews—along the line seven miles west of Miller’s Siding when a runaway ore car struck him, killing him instantly. Before the disabled car could be switched off the main line, the Reno Express, traveling at roughly sixty-five miles per hour in an effort to recover lost time, plowed through the wreckage.

The collision did not derail either the train or the engine, but it shut down traffic for five hours.

Because Miller’s Siding lay in Esmeralda County, an inquest was held there on October 5. The verdict was “accidental death.” With that, the official record closed.

Mihiel Christopoulos was buried in the Old Tonopah Cemetery.

In life, he labored without notice; in death, he was identified only as the “Greek,” and nearly erased. Yet someone—perhaps a friend, perhaps a countryman—placed a large wooden marker over his grave, inscribed with his name and date of death, written in Greek. Like so many early grave markers, however, it has since vanished.