Valley cemetery marks final resting place for Snoop Dogg, Nicolas Cage’s pets

Stoney the Elephant lived more than two decades in captivity when, in September 1994, while rehearsing a one-foot stand for the “Winds of the Gods” variety show at the Luxor hotel, the hamstring in his left back leg snapped.

The Luxor placed the pachyderm in a warehouse and readied a $34,000 custom barn in Arkansas, where the hotel had planned to send him for recuperation, but, as animal rights protesters demonstrated outside about his treatment, the 7,000-pound elephant injured his right rear leg and soon died on Aug. 28, 1995.

Hours later, Stoney was transported to a 20-foot-deep hole at the Craig Road Pet Cemetery at 7450 W. Craig Road, where his entire body was buried and his marked grave still shows a protruding “hump” beneath a mature tree growing on top of it.

That’s just one of the stories at the Craig Road pet graveyard, where the remains of more than 1,000 animals — and more than 300 humans — have been interred in the ground or in a mausoleum since the graveyard opened in 1972, according to burial specialist Nancy Johnson, who has worked there for the past 11 years.

‘It affects us, too, the sadness of it’

Most of the pets and all of the humans there were cremated, the people having requested to have their animals’ cremains placed with theirs, Johnson said.

The pet cemetery is licensed with the state of Nevada, and each animal buried there has to be registered and a government fee collected, according to Johnson.

Pet owners in mourning coming through the door express their emotions openly, she said.

“A lot of them are crying uncontrollably,” Johnson said. “By Friday some weeks, we’re ready to shut the door at 4 o’clock and lock up, because it affects us, too, the sadness of them.”

One of the people whose remains are there is former KSNV-TV, Channel 3, weatherman John Fredericks (also known as John Frederick Alden), who died at age 57 in 2012. His ashes are in a large mausoleum with those of his golden retriever Jordan.

Another is Don Lamond, a former TV and film actor who narrated several “The Three Stooges” comedy films in the late 1950s to early 1960s and was married to Stooges member Larry Fine’s daughter, Phyllis. His cremains are interred with ashes of his eight pets.

Celebrity connections

The business at the cemetery has a sideline in cremation services, for animals only, with its five cremation chambers based on pet size, one of which Johnson said is the largest offered for pets in the county, big enough to cremate an elephant.

And as with some other Las Vegas businesses, there are connections with celebrities.

In the cemetery office, rows of 8x10 glossy photos, each signed, appear on its “Hall of Fame” of well-known Vegas pet owners who brought in their animals — or “babies” as Johnson calls them — to be buried there or cremated and the ashes ready to be taken home.

The rapper Snoop Dog had his dog put in a grave under a fictitious name, Johnson said.

Famed pianist Liberace visited to have his pet cremated, as did comedian and actor Redd Foxx, movie star and comedian Jerry Lewis, singer Robert Goulet, actor Nicolas Cage, comedian George Burns, retired professional tennis player Andre Agassi, UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, female impersonator Frank Moreno and World Series of Poker star Doyle Brunson.

“All the (the actors in the TV show) ‘Pawn Stars,’ we’ve done their dogs,” Johnson said.

The cemetery provided cremation over the years for the big cats owned by the late venerated Strip illusionists and tiger and lion trainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, Johnson said.

“We’ve done all of Siegfried and Roy’s babies before they (the performers) passed,” she said. “They are all in Germany now with Siegfried and Roy in a mausoleum. They were all flown over there.’

Horn died in 2020 and Fischbacher in 2021.

One tiger that died after the two men’s deaths was cremated at the Craig Road cemetery, and the cremains were shipped to Germany, she said.

Walking inside the grassy cemetery, looking down at the grave markers, one can see that the vast majority of animals are former pet dogs and cats with names like “Boomer,” “Lucky,” “Bam Bam,” “Paco,” Cowboy” and “Torpedo.”

The graveyard has a special section just for people’s deceased horses, which the management offers to pick up at the person’s home with a truck and horse trailer, Johnson said.

A grave marker for a horse named Bucky that died in 1999 is engraved in part with the words, “Good by my sweet boy. Now you can run without pain.”

Most of the horses are cremated, but “there are some full body horses buried over there, in special-made vaults for horses,” Johnson said.

Special K-9 resting place

The pet cemetery also maintains an area for the graves of K-9 dogs formerly with the Metropolitan and North Las Vegas police departments.

Johnson recalled when Nicky, a Metro police dog killed in the line of duty in 2016, was honored by a full funeral procession of officers that closed traffic down on Craig Road before its burial there.

The cremains of “Karate Kid” movie star Pat Morita, who died in 2005, will be laid to rest at the cemetery with those of his pets after his wife dies, Johnson said.

“They paid for everything to be buried here with their babies,” she said.

Morita, who has a pre-need arrangement, could be among the last humans allowed there, she said.

The new owner that bought the graveyard eight months ago, Canada-based pet cemetery company Gateway, has decided against accepting any more humans, as Nevada requires special licensing procedures, Johnson said.

On a recent day, a man and a woman, both looking downcast, walked into the office, seeking a cremation.

“OK, got your baby with you?” Johnson asked.

“Yes,” they said solemnly.

Another mourner, Becky Sadowsky, 67, a 36-year Las Vegas resident, came in to pick up an urn with the ashes of her late cat, Abby, a Siamese mix.

Sadowsky said that when she dies, her cremains will join those of her husband, Greg Nelson, her mother, Harriet Sadowsky, and her pets at a spot to be selected at the cemetery. The cremains of Greg Sadowsky and Harriet Sadowsky are stored at her home.

“It was always our plan to be buried with our pets because they’re like family members,” Sadowsky said. “I heard there are 300 humans buried (here) and some people think it’s a nicer cemetery than human cemeteries. They always take such good care.”

Mary Rowan, 60, a native Las Vegan, came by to have a Craig Road cemetery employee place the urn with the ashes of her mother, Barbara Rowan, who died more than a year ago at 87, inside a grave with the ashes of Mary Rowan’s father, Joseph Rowan, her mother’s two horses and a pet dog. Her cremains will join them in the grave after she dies.

“I mean, if you own pets and you take so much time to want to memorialize them in some fashion, it just felt right,” she said.

Before Barbara Rowan died, they discussed the option of interment of an urn with cremains at a human graveyard, and after learning it would cost about $10,000, “She goes, ‘You know, I’d just rather be with the animals,’” Mary Rowan said.

“So we just put her in her final resting place with her husband and her horses,” she said. “What she loved most was her family and her horses.”

One of Barbara Rowan’s horses, Roscoe, lived for 30 years and was a tremendous comfort to her for years while she recovered from a double mastectomy, her daughter said.

“She went out there and (was) just brushing him and talking to him. There’s no judgment, you know, just get on my back, let’s go,” she said. “She’d take a bag of carrots, and, just the interaction, and he would just have his head on her shoulder, and that was just it.”

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.