Boot Hill Graveyard
Posted: 11.14.2024 | Updated: 11.14.2024
Tombstone hardly needs any introduction these days, with television, comic books, and films immortalizing the gunslinger tales of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday at the O.K. Corral. However, telling the facts from the fiction is a completely different tale. Boot Hill Graveyard is a place in this Wild West town where reality begins to blur.
As one of the last boomtowns of the American West, Tombstone was founded on the prospect of possibly the largest silver deposits in Arizona. In the span of a few years, 15 people became 15,000.
The shootout at the O.K. Corral would forever cement the town into legacy. But for those who died that day, their legacy is as dirty and grimy as the graves they’re rotting in, and maybe, just maybe, they’re still restless inside them.
Let’s saddle up and hit the trail of fact and legend, for we might find more than just the dead buried in this graveyard. For those of you yearning for more spooks and scares, book our Tombstone Ghost Tour, Tombstone Terrors.
Tombstone is home to infamous gunfights, villainous outlaws, and legendary lawmen. Uncover their sinister secrets and notorious deeds buried six feet under in Boot Hill Graveyard.
Who Is Buried at Boot Hill Graveyard?
Boot Hill Graveyard is nearly as famous as Tombstone, with its many colorful epitaphs that have amused and confused townsfolk and tourists for decades. It’s always fun to look at the Boothill Graveyard photos and see what’s there. Those with a keen eye might even be able to make out the names of Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury among the morbid sea of others.
They’re the three men who died at the O.K. Corral gunfight, and they might be more lively than you think.
No Less, No More
Boot Hill Graveyard was created in 1878, one year after Tombstone was founded. At first, the cemetery was called City Cemetery. Mining was prosperous work for those brave enough to venture into the mines. But it often led to many deaths, which is why the cemetery was built.
In the beginning, families and loved ones were buried there. But as the town grew and more and more ruffians and thieves found themselves meeting their ends there, the cemetery became more like a pauper’s pit.
There are more unmarked graves than marked ones in Boot Hill Graveyard.
By 1884, 250 residents had found their eternal homes at Boot Hill. At this point, a new cemetery had been built, and the townspeople seemed more eager to bury their loved ones here than amongst killers and thieves.
As the years went by, Boot Hill became overgrown and neglected. The gravestones rotted and became nearly illegible. It wasn’t until 1929 that the townspeople decided to fix up the place and restore the gravestones, and it wasn’t easy.
The cemetery was in such disarray that it was hard to say who was buried where or if anyone was buried there at all. People’s memories could only go so far, and at this point, there were only several hundred people left in town as opposed to the thousands.
It was also at this time that Boot Hill Graveyard got the name that everyone knows. It seems to come from an old phrase, “died with their boots on.” It’s possible that the rise of Western films and dime store novels helped influence the name.
Though there is no uncertainty of those who did die with their boots on and guns in their hands, the men who died at the O.K. Corral.
Shootout at The O.K. Corral
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral is both simple and complicated. Tension had been rising between the Earp brothers and a band of cattle thieves known as the Cowboys. Lawlessness met with law hardly ever paints a pretty picture.
A city ordinance prohibited carrying weapons into town. Everyone seemed to have gotten the memo except the Cowboys. Brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, along with Billy Claiborne and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury, had decided to come into town with their guns.
The Earp brothers, along with Doc Holiday, went to intercept the gang and take their guns.
The rest is history.
No one is quite sure who shot first, nor is anyone quite sure why the shooting happened. What is known for certain is this.
The fight took less than a minute, with Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury dying by the hand of a bullet in less than a second. Died with their boots on. Afterward, they joined all the other men who thought they were above the law in the Boot Hill Graveyard.
But are their souls truly at rest?
Ghost Riders of The Boot Hill Graveyard
Some may call Boot Hill a cesspool, a viper’s pit. It is a graveyard where men too young are buried for foolish reasons and a place where foolish men gamble with death and lose– a field of anger and misery. It is the perfect place to manifest spirits from beyond the grave.
Boot Hill’s hauntings have become somewhat of a local legend, though visitors swear they have seen something. Some have said they’ve seen strange lights or heard strange noises.
Others think they’ve seen shadows roaming the graveyard in the late evenings. The most interesting report is that people have seen Billy Clanton himself trying to get back into town from the cemetery before vanishing.
Of course, that’s not the only haunted place in Tombstone.
Ghosts of Tombstone
There are more ghosts in this almost ghost town than there are residents. Too many to count properly. So, here’s a little run down of some of the more famous restless residences.
The Bird Cage Theatre is home to many ghostly cowboys and prostitutes, and perhaps even the ghost of the “Painted Lady,” who was gruesomely stabbed to death with a stiletto. Maybe the customer isn’t always right.
Schieffelin Hall offered more refined entertainment than some of the other places around town, so much so that it is believed that the ghosts of past performers are still entertaining audiences of the living.
Big Nose Kate’s Saloon was the place to be during the height of the silver boom in Tombstone. Some may have even been too obsessed with silver, hiding it from those who wish to take it. At least that’s what the Swamper believes, an appreciation who roams the saloon, guarding his hidden silver.
Haunted Tombstone
Of course, Tombstone has plenty more scares to offer you if you dare to go looking for them. What’s a better place to start your search than right here with Tombstone Terrors? We have plenty for you to read that will keep you up at night, wondering about what may lurk on the other side of the veil.
For those who want to do more than read about ghosts, book a tour with our Ghost Tour in Tombstone with Tombstone Terrors.
Keep reading our blog for more content on Tombstone’s most haunted places!
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Sources:
https://tombstonechamber.com/about-tombstone-az/tombstone-history/
https://coffeehousewriters.com/haunted-boothill-graveyard/
https://southernarizonaguide.com/anyone-really-buried-boothill-graveyard/
https://tombstonechamber.com/BootHillGraveyard/history-of-boothill-graveyard/
https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/haunted/photos/haunted-tales-from-the-grave
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Tombstone: The Town Too Tough To Die. Home of the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral and two major fires, this old mining down has more secrets buried beneath its wild west history.
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