Henry Harkless

JUDGE BRISSELL CONVENED AN INQUEST on June 2, 1908, into the death of a man believed to be sixty-seven-year-old Henry Harkless, who had dropped dead that day in front of Summerfield and Johnson’s Pioneer Stables on Main Street. Death was ruled to have resulted from natural causes and was “supposed to be heart failure.” The deceased was identified by several individuals who stated they had known Harkless for years.

Henry Harkless was described as a Nevada pioneer who owned a ranch thirty-three miles from town near Salisbury Springs. A wagon he had driven into Tonopah was taken possession of by the Public Administrator and sold to a local grocer for $125 to cover burial expenses. The man identified as Harkless was buried shortly thereafter, quietly and with little ceremony.

The story should have ended there.

Instead, on June 26—twenty-four days after his supposed death—Henry Harkless rode into Tonopah very much alive.

The bizarre affair was quickly revealed to be a case of mistaken identity, despite testimony from witnesses “who had known him for twenty-five years,” all of whom had sworn that the dead man was Henry Harkless. The true identity of the deceased was never discovered. To compound the tragedy, the unknown man—whose family may have wondered why he never wrote—was buried in an unmarked grave outside the cemetery fence.

Because Harkless’s wagon had been sold conditionally, he was able to reclaim his property. The grocer, suddenly deprived of his purchase, was left to look for another wagon.

The real Henry Harkless, born in Ohio about 1837, died twelve years later in the county hospital at Tonopah of kidney and heart disease and was buried in the New Tonopah Cemetery.

Henry Harkless rode away with his life restored. The man who died in his place was granted no such correction. In Tonopah, one man returned from the dead, while another remains buried without a name—just beyond the fence, where mistakes were left to rest.