Died Eating Library Paste

Goldfield, Nevada

Goldfield was an early 20th century Wild West mining boomtown that attracted the usual share of short-lived characters. Many of them ended up in what is now called the "Pioneer Section" of Goldfield Cemetery, a sun-blistered patch of desert, its graves marked by headstones of roughly-shaped rocks with brief, hand-chiseled epitaphs, which are kept legible by local volunteers who paint the rocks white and the lettering black and red.

The most frequent cause of death mentioned on these stones is from mining accidents or disease, although several list "shot," and one, Edward Hughes, died of "self-strangulation."

By far the most peculiar demise is ascribed to an "Unknown Man" who, on July 14, 1908, "Died Eating Library Paste." He was reported in a 1908 edition of the Reno-Gazette as a hungry vagrant who found the jar of paste in the trash, succumbed near an automobile garage, and then was autopsied by the county physician, who in the process discovered the man's last meal.