The road starts near the intersection of Executive and Paisano, where a little street called San Marcos peters out into gravel and climbs up the hill of brown dirt tinged with gray undertones, before coming to a pair of pipe gates. The gate blocking the road is white and locked with a chain and five locks, like links, so that a key to any one of the locks can open the gate. Through the yellow gate (open, the day I visited) the turn leads to a flat space that may have been cleared to function as a parking lot for the cemetery that lies just beyond it. A short chain link fence runs on the shelf on top of the cut.
El Paso has other iconic cemeteries. Concordia, in the psychological center of town, where John Wesley Hardin lies behind bars, under a gated canopy and a lately carved granite headstone. Evergreen, on Alameda, the final resting place of Mexican president Victoriano Huerta, and the graveyard where the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez went to nurture his demons. Huerta's body was moved to Evergreen from Concordia, apparently to get away from the gambling and gunslinging riffraff. He may rest more comfortably with other politicians, but I wouldn't.
The Smeltertown Cemetery was launched in 1882, according to the dates on the steel archway over the gate to the cemetery proper. El Paso wasn't a lot, then, the year after the railroad arrived, and the smelter was a respectful distance out of town. The smelter's employees saw no reason to make a commute to the city, and so founded the little community known as Smeltertown near the base of the smokestacks. The river provided water, and the smelter provided work and a company store for comestibles and sundries. In time a church was built and cemetery sanctified to care for the Smeltertown's otherworldly needs.
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