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Archer Cemetery
Archer, San Bernardino County, California

Lat: 34° 25' 15"N, Lon: 115° 21' 56"W
T4N R15E Sec 24

Contributed by Joe de Kehoe, Jul 24, 2005, last edited May 03, 2006. [jdekehoe@bak.rr.com]. Total records = 2.

To reach Archer, take National Trails Highway, twelve and a half miles east of Amboy, California, to the Cadiz Road. Turn south. Follow the paved road three miles to a broad left-hand turn and after another mile and a half to a broad right hand turn and proceed over the railroad tracks. From this point the pavement ends and the road forks in three directions.

The road to Archer is the wide dirt road straight ahead. Two miles to the south the road crosses over the single track of the Parker Branch line and runs east of a petroleum pipeline terminal with a tall radio mast. Continue following the dirt road another seven and a half miles until you notice a lone salt cedar tree adjacent to the track about an eighth of a mile east of the road. The tree marks the site of Archer. The cemetery is about a hundred and fifty feet southeast of the tree, on the east side of the tracks.

Archer Cemetery is in one of the most remote parts of the Mojave Desert, nine miles from the nearest paved road. It is seldom visited and until recently has not received any maintenance. Judging from the mounds of dirt and the placement of stones there are nine graves at Archer.

A few years back I came across a fellow named Paul Limon who lived at Archer for a short time as a young boy in the late 1930s. Paul has been instrumental in assisting me with restoration of some of the long forgotten cemeteries in this part of the desert. Taking care not to disturb the fragments of the original sandstone marker, Paul recently erected a new wooden cross for young Vicente Lopez in the Archer Cemetery.

The other eight graves are marked with wooden crosses, one of which once bore a carved inscription that is no longer legible except for the word “Mario”. Although some railroad workers may have passed away and were buried at Archer, it is more likely that the graves are those of infants and small children who succumbed to the heat or childhood diseases. Except for the two listed, the names of those buried at Archer have been lost to time.

With Paul's assistance eventually all of the graves at the cemetery will have new crosses. Maintenance work planned for this Fall when temperatures abate will be new crosses for the other graves, some maintenance work on the ring of stones around the cemetery and removing some of the plants that have taken root.

I visited this cemetery in the summer of 2005.

- Joe de Kehoe

Lopez, Vicente, d. Aug 30, 1924, age: 5 months old. "Sus padres dedican este recuerdo, R.I.P."
Mario, Alvieto, no dates, inscription on a wooden cross illegible