Retired geologist Barb Tomes Vietti was in shock and could hardly believe the data she was looking at.
As a member of the Hot Springs County Historical Society, she had been researching Smoky Row Cemetery, a small graveyard located in the Hot Springs State Park’s Buffalo Pasture.
It had a rich past and colorful stories that had been handed down through the generations and she had been excited to learn more.
To back up her historical investigation, Vietti brought in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to scan the ground and tell her what lay underneath the red dirt. Her plan was to match the nine mounds and gravestones with the actual bodies beneath.
University of Wyoming Professor Andy Parsekian and his students spent a morning thoroughly scanning the entire cemetery and sent her the results.
What surprised her and others in the historical society was that the science did not match the stories they had all heard while growing up in Thermopolis.
Vietti’s own aunt, Anna Peterson, had done the original research and had been convinced that that there were nine people buried in the Smoky Row Cemetery. As a result, a stone monument had been erected that named those that had been laid to rest under the red hills.
However, ground radar results only showed three possible disturbances.
Instead of finding the answers she expected, Vietti was left with more questions. If there had only been three people buried in this graveyard, what happened to the other six?
The Community Of Smoky Row
In the late 1800s, Smoky Row was a small community in remote Wyoming that was more than a temporary campground but not quite a shanty town.
Inhabitants had burrowed into the red dirt of the hills and heaped rocks to build their dugouts. Tents dotted the area, and the sounds of gambling would drift from the dirt floor saloon that was the center of activity.
Instead of being funneled up and away from the camp, the smoke from the campfires settled into the gulch where they had made their home. As a result of this thick cloud, the popular settlement became known as Smoky Row.
The occupants of this ramshackle community, ranging from outlaws to rich businessmen, were all there to soak in the healing hot springs that bubbled out of the ground. Rock baths had been built, and entire families would come to enjoy a vacation from their hard lives on this new frontier.
About Those Buried There
Today, all that remains of this small settlement is the fenced Smoky Row Cemetery and a mystery that dates back to the 1890s.
As early as the 1930s, attempts were being made to determine just who the people were that were buried in this cemetery. In 1962, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument to the people they identified by name and two they claimed were unknown.
The stories the Daughters of the American Revolution uncovered were recorded by the local newspaper.
Ollie Koshear, from the east side of the Big Horns, was said to have slipped over the falls into the Bighorn River, while placing articles under the falls to be coated.
Jesse Burson was seven or eight years old and the son of Jack Burson. He had taken his father’s revolver while he was away and went to hunt some ducks. Some distance up the river, Jesse attempted to cock the revolver and placed the gun against his stomach. The pistol was discharged, killing him.
Elton Perry is another person the Daughters of the American Revolution believed was buried at Smoky Row. He ran a hotel in Andersonville which was located on the Bighorn River, east of the old town of Thermopolis at the mouth of Owl Creek some miles away from the community’s present location.
A.J. McCrey of Buffalo took his own life at the White Sulphur Spring. The newspaper account was detailed and told how he had saturated a handkerchief with chloroform and tied it over his face. He was found face down in the tub of the bathhouse, leaving behind a letter addressed to his friends.
Also buried in the Smoky Row Cemetery is “Auger-nose Jane” who was listed as a Smoky Row “character.” Jack Berry was an old solider and mail carrier from Embar to Torrey, who dived into the first swimming pool and was killed. Ralph Gellerno was a Frenchman from Glenrock. Finally, the DAR listed an unknown man and woman.
In 1898, after the town of Thermopolis was moved to its present site, the first burial was made at Monument Hill and became the town’s official cemetery.
Smoky Row Cemetery, used from 1890 to 1900, was abandoned and all but forgotten until the DAR members, more than 60 years later, erected the special marker to call attention to the area’s early pioneers.
The Smokey Row Cemetery sign. Over the years, Smoky Row has been spelled Smokey or Smoky. Even the Hot Springs State Park lists it spelled both ways. Barb Tomes Vietti said that most newspapers in Wyoming in the 1890s spelled it Smoky Row so she said that is how the locals spell the name. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Barb Tomes Vietti is passionate about history in her hometown of Thermopolis and admits to going down a rabbit hole when she started investigating the history behind the Smoky Row Cemetery. Her research has revealed that the cemetery has three graves, not the six to 10 that legend had claimed. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Smoky Row Cemetery was established in the early 1890s, before Thermopolis was founded. For years, locals believed that six to 10 people were buried in the small graveyard, but modern science has proved that only three graves exist. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Ralph Gellerno or Gallerno has the only marked grave at the Smoky Row Cemetery. Researcher Barb Tomes Vietti believes that he is one of three graves that exist in the small cemetery, rather than the six to ten as originally believed. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Professor Andy Parsekian and two University of Wyoming Students use a ground penetrating radar to search for disturbances beneath the ground. The three disturbances they found could be a combination of graves and exhumed graves. (Courtesy Barb Tomes Vietti) 
Smoky Row was a tourist destination for those wanting to soak in the hot springs. Rock bath houses, dug outs and even saloons were built into the hills. (Hot Springs County Museum) 
An 1898 newspaper article from the Big Horn River Pilot details the unfortunate suicide of the owner of the Occidental Hotel, McCrey. He is believed to be one of three who are buried at the Smoky Row Cemetery.
Unraveling The Myth
While helping the local historical society clean up the abandoned cemetery of weeds and overgrown bushes, Vietti had grown curious about the people who had been buried there before Thermopolis had even been founded.
“It was just an old cemetery that we drove past for years,” Vietti said. “We put it back together and I started researching it.”
She found records that spoke of a cemetery near the Smoky Row settlement which was in a nearby gulch. Other accounts spoke of people being buried east of the big spring which she also deduced was the Smoky Row Cemetery.
“Tacetta Walker was the first one to really write about Smoky Row Cemetery,” Vietti said, referring to Walker’s 1930s book, “Stories of Early Days in Wyoming.”
“She said there were six people out there, not nine.”
The names were also spelled differently than what the Daughters of the American Revolution had placed on the monument.
Walker named “Ollie Koshear” as Mollie Cashier and “A. J. McCrey” as McCrea, owner of the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo. She said that Antelope Jack’s son, Jesse Berson (not Burson) died in the shooting accident at the mouth of the Wind River Canyon. Ralph from Glenrock and a baby were the others she said were buried there, with no mention of who the sixth person may have been.
Walker also claimed that it was the Civilian Conservation Corps who had erroneously heaped rocks around the graves to make them appear as if there were nine graves rather than six.
In 1956, Ralph Barker, the first director of the Hot Springs County Museum, wrote a letter that detailed the six people the Pioneer Association had listed as occupants of the cemetery.
He said that two bodies had been removed and that only one, Ralph “Galvino” had a marker. Barker said he was named after Galvino but was too small to have known the Frenchman when he died.
Barker listed Ollie Koshear, Jesse Burson, Elton Perry, Dr. J. A. McCrey, and Augernose Jane as the other five buried at Smoky Row. He noted that Augernose Jane weighed 300 pounds and was a visitor at the springs.
Guesswork Combined With Science
Vietti found no documentation for Elton Perry, Jack Berry or Jesse Burson being buried in the Smoky Row Cemetery although she found proof that they had once lived in the region. Ollie had died in 1889, before the cemetery was started so she believes he might be buried elsewhere.
“Dorothy Milek came along in 1974 and published her book about the history of the Hot Springs,” Vietti said. “She said there were seven graves, but she only gives six names. I don't know who the seventh one would be, so that's what piqued my interest.”
As Vietti dug into the research, she didn't come up with any answers that made sense. That was when she reached out to a geophysicist at the University of Wyoming, Dr. Parsekian.
She was able to talk him into doing an outreach project at the Smoky Row Cemetery. Subsequently, he spent a morning running a grid across the cemetery with two students.
His team discovered that were three disturbances beneath the ground, not six or nine. These disturbances would match Barker’s story that two were exhumed and buried elsewhere. The third disturbance was rather larger and Vietti became convinced that it could very well be Augernose Jane.
“Looking at the seismic picture that I got from the GPR, I could see that that it might have been a huge grave,” Vietti said. “And it could be her. Who knows?”
By comparing dates and stories, she has also concluded that another of the bodies was most likely Ralph Galliano, whose name had been spelled three or four different ways. He had been a family friend to the McGrath’s, founding members of Thermopolis, which would explain why he had a headstone.
The third person Vietti believes would be A. J. McCrey who committed suicide and asked to be buried above the springs, which would place him at Smoky Row Cemetery. He had been financially ruined, and his friends paid for his funeral.
“When you go back and try to find out what really happened, it's a shot in the dark,” Vietti admitted.
She paused as she looked over the cemetery as if looking for the mysteries that lay beneath before adding, “We don't even know how to correctly spell their names so the best we can do is guess.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
