Virginia City

An iron adornment was stolen from this bolt. Cemetery vandalism in Virginia City, Nev., was common before fences went up in 2004.  (Scott Sady / For The Times)

This sleeping cherub was taken from a Virginia City, Nev., cemetery decades ago. Since the mid-1990s, more than 100 stolen headstones, flower holders and fence posts have returned to Virginia City, many with notes that essentially say, “I stole this, it cursed me, take it back!”  (Scott Sady / For The Times)

Kathy Easley, in period costume, leads a group around historical burial grounds in Virginia City, Nev. These days, the cemeteries are more parks for the living than monuments to the dead, with about 100 visitors a day and more marriages than funerals.  (Scott Sady / For The Times)

Once beautiful Victorian gardens, the Comstock’s resting places had fallen into such disrepair over the years that they had invited a pillager’s free-for-all, leaving it to cemetary preservationists to reunite the stolen artifacts with the proper graves.  (Scott Sady / For The Times)

Tour guide Kathy Easley is seen at the historical burial grounds in Virginia City, Nev., which boomed in the 1860s as a silver mining town. Corpses were buried where convenient and, if mining demanded it, were uprooted.  (Scott Sady / For The Times)