Cedarvale Cemetery was established in 1880 by the Knights of Pythias. 

Citizens important to both White Oaks and New Mexico are buried there: W C. McDonald, once a White Oaks surveyor and later the first New Mexico governor after statehood; Susan McSween Barber (her name misspelled on her gravestone), a survivor of the Lincoln County War (see Lincoln entry, p. 69) and later known as the Cattle Queen of New Mexico; John Wilson, one of the original discoverers of the gold strike; and David "Jack" Jackson and his wife Mary, the only black residents of White Oaks. 

Jackson arrived in 1897 and witnessed the decline of the town from its late boom days. It was a virtual ghost town just after the turn of the century, but Jack Jackson stayed on,  maintaining the graveyard voluntarily, carrying soup to sick community residents, and even oiling mining machinery in abandoned mines so that if the mines ever opened again the equipment would not be rusted. He died in 1963 and now rests in the cemetery he helped to preserve.

Reported Phenomena

The Investigation