Boothill Graveyard

About the Graveyard

The Graveyard is among my favorite spots in Tombstone since the stories about the folks buried here are pretty exciting, and the Graveyard is always very peaceful and calm. Boothill graveyard was called the Tombstone Cemetery when it was opened in 1879. It was closed in 1884 when the new cemetery was opened on Allen Street. The old cemetery was abandoned for nearly 40 years before Arlington H. Gardiner, secretary of the Tombstone Commercial Club, enlisted a Boy Scout troop in 1923 to begin cleaning it up. The city attempted to contact relatives of those buried here to verify their locations. In 1945, Emmett Nunnelly was permitted to operate a concession at Boothill in exchange for his work to restore the cemetery, properly mark the graves, and generally clean up the brush and weeds.

John Clum, who founded the Tombstone Epitaph and served as Tombstone's first mayor, returned years later to visit his wife's grave and was unable to find either the grave or the cemetery. He later described the experience as "most depressing," a vivid reminder of how thoroughly the site had been forgotten.

The name "Boothill" likely originated in Dodge City, where the term "boot hill" first appeared in print in the May 6, 1877, issue of the Dodge City Times. The name became a staple of dime novels and newspaper articles during the early 20th century. Writer Frederick Bechdolt attached it to Tombstone's cemetery in a series of Saturday Evening Post articles (1919) and his 1922 book When the West Was Young, describing the site in romantic terms that bore little resemblance to what visitors actually found: an overgrown, garbage-strewn hillside with crumbling wooden markers. Bechdolt's account created tourist expectations that Tombstone felt pressure to meet, and the name stuck. Tombstone eventually settled on the single-word spelling "Boothill" as its official designation, while Dodge City retained "Boot Hill." The name symbolized those buried there who had "died with their boots on," referring to their unexpected deaths.

Often, the guests visiting Tombstone expect to see gamblers and gunslingers buried in Boothill, and they are surprised to learn that we also have the innocent buried here. It is essential to remember that this was our city cemetery, and anyone who died in Tombstone would be buried here, the good and bad alike. For example, local legend says that the first person buried here was Eva Waters, who was only three months old when she died of scarlet fever. Near her grave is that of Hilly Hickson, a boy who broke his leg from a fall off a pair of stilts and died a few weeks later of a blood infection. On the other hand, the three men killed at the Gunfight on Fremont Street (commonly called "The Gunfight at the OK Corral") and the seven men legally hanged behind the Courthouse are buried here, along with their peers who are far from innocent.

No system was used to organize the graves; instead, people seemed to be buried wherever there was space when they died. However, the seven men executed behind the courthouse are all buried in one corner of the graveyard. Another corner contains the graves of Chinese workers who lived in this town. Also, a Jewish memorial is located just off the back corner of the graveyard.

The popular belief that Boothill was reserved for outlaws and men who died violently persisted for decades. In 1936, a woman arrived from Missouri searching for the grave of her mother, Flora Stumph, who had died in a dentist's chair from the effects of anesthesia in 1884. Some Tombstone residents insisted the cemetery was "reserved" for those who died in "debauchery or lawlessness" and that a respectable housewife must have been buried elsewhere. Stumph's niece traveled from Phoenix to help verify the burial plot. The resulting publicity embarrassed the city into ordering an accelerated effort to identify and document the remaining graves, and the notion that Boothill was exclusively an outlaw cemetery gradually gave way to a more accurate picture.

I suppose what I am most often asked is, "Is Boothill a real cemetery?" Yes, it is an actual cemetery. After about 1890, the silver industry was dying out, and Tombstone was in danger of becoming a ghost town. During that time, Boothill was abandoned, and photographs taken in the early 1920s show the area as nothing more than the desert with a few scattered grave markers. Unlike other boom towns that survived to the modern era, the citizens of Tombstone never did anything to actively destroy the cemetery location and build on top of that ground. In the 1920s, the city reconstructed Boothill, so they pored over old records, interviewed "old-timers" and people who had relatives buried here, and even pounded a long steel rod into the ground to try to locate caskets. The tireless efforts of many people throughout the mid-20th century restored Boothill as much as possible. So, yes, it is an actual cemetery.

Graves

While most of the graves in Boothill are genuine, there seem to be a few that have been fabricated over the years to appeal to tourists.

• Lester Moore. His epitaph reads: Here lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a .44, No Les No more. This grave is, without doubt, the most famous in Boothill. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of anyone named Lester Moore being killed in a gunfight or even living in the Tombstone area, nor the burial location of the other man supposedly also killed in the gunfight, Hank Dunstan. Finally, the date of this incident is not known though some people report the year as 1880. All-in-all, this grave does not seem to be genuine.
• George Johnson. His epitaph reads: Here lies George Johnson, hanged by mistake 1882. He was right, we were wrong, but we strung him up and now he's gone. It is not possible to know if a George Johnson lived in Tombstone in the 1880s, but there is no record of a lynching, or other untimely death, of anyone by that name. The most probable conclusion is that this clever epitaph was added to Boothill for tourists.
• John Heath. He was lynched in Tombstone, but his body was shipped to his relatives in Terrell, TX, for burial. The February 28, 1884, issue of the Kaufman Sun published in Terrell, TX, printed this notice: "John Heath was taken by a mob from jail and hung [sic] in Tombstone. His remains were brought to Terrell and interred yesterday. He was a notorious gambler, burglar, horse and cattle thief." Thus, while a John Heath was lynched in Tombstone, the grave with his name in Boothill is empty.
• Thomas Harper. He was hanged and buried in Tucson, not Tombstone. He supposedly killed John Talliday in a card game. Both Harper and Talliday have been listed as buried in Boothill by different sources, but since Harper is not in Boothill, it is doubtful that Talliday is here.
• Neves Deron. This grave was also listed as "Fiderico Doran" but is likely actually "Federico Duran." The legend is that Duran robbed a train in Mexico and escaped to the Tombstone area. A friend, Guadalupe Robles, let Duran hide at his wood-cutting camp in the Whetstone mountains. Then, John Slaughter, the Cochise County Sheriff, found the hideout and shot Duran while attempting to capture him. In reality, Duran was captured in Mexico by Mexican authorities and executed there by a firing squad. He was not killed in Cochise County, Slaughter had nothing to do with his death, and he is not buried in Boothill. This also raises questions about Guadalupe Robles, who was said to have been shot during the Duran arrest. Robles may be buried in Boothill, and he may have died of a gunshot by Slaughter, but his death is not related to that of Duran.

Tourists in Tombstone should enjoy their visit to Boothill; however, it is likely that at least a few of the graves are only intended for photographs and stories.

Sources

• Kevin Britz, "'Boot Hill Burlesque': The Frontier Cemetery as Tourist Attraction in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas," Journal of Arizona History, vol. 44, no. 3 (2003), pp. 211–242.