Mari Sandoz is buried on a hillside south of Gordon, overlooking the Sandhills ranch her family homesteaded. She asked to be buried there. It is a single grave rather than a cemetery, and it is one of the few literary landmarks in this part of Nebraska.
She was born near Hay Springs in Sheridan County on 11 May 1896, the daughter of Jules Ami Sandoz — a hard and domineering Swiss homesteader who disapproved of her reading and her writing both. In 1928, dying, he asked her to write his life. She did, and Old Jules (1935) made her name: the story of her father and of the settlers who came into the upper Niobrara country in the last years of the nineteenth century.
She went on to write more than a dozen books, among them Slogum House (1937), Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas (1942), Cheyenne Autumn (1953), The Buffalo Hunters (1954), The Cattlemen (1958) and The Beaver Men (1964). Six of them form a linked series on the trans-Missouri country, and she was known internationally as a historian of the West and of the Plains tribes. She lived much of her later life in New York, and died there of bone cancer on 10 March 1966. She came home to be buried.
The state historical marker stands on State Highway 27 about twenty-four miles north of Highway 2, near Ellsworth. Its text reads in part: "This is the country of Mari Sandoz — historian, novelist, teacher — who brought its history and its people to life in her many books, articles and stories… Although she lived much of her life in the East, she is buried here in her own West." It was erected by the Nebraska Centennial Commission and the Land Mark Council.
The marker is the public stopping point. The grave itself is on private ranch ground — this is a working ranch, not a park, and there is no cemetery, no fence and no car park. Anyone wanting to go up to the grave should ask locally first. The Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State College holds her papers and can advise.
The Sandoz name also appears among the burials at Beguin Cemetery, south of Rushville, at the other end of this county.
For burial records or plot enquiries, contact the City of Gordon, or the Sheridan County Clerk in Rushville. Ownership can also be confirmed through the Nebraska Statewide Cemetery Registry at the State Historical Society.