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"BOOT HILL BURLESQUE": The Frontier Cemetery as Tourist Attraction in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas Author(s): Kevin Britz Source: The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (autumn 2003), pp. 211-242 Published by: Arizona Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41696788 Accessed: 14-08-2015 22:56 UTC

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"BOOT HILL BURLESQUE"

The Frontier Cemetery as Tourist

Attraction in

Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City,

Kansas

by Kevin Britz

IN The one

Magnificent

of the early Seven

scenes two unemployed

of John Sturges's Tombstone

1960 epic and

Western

Dodge The Magnificent Seven , two unemployed Tombstone and Dodge City gunfighters played by Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner drive a hearse containing an Indian corpse to a boothill cemetery over the objections of the town's "civilized" element. The puzzled trav-

eling salesman who hires them to forcibly deliver the body points out that boothill is the traditional final resting place of "murder- ers, cutthroats, and derelict old barflies." As such, boothill ceme- teries have become testimonials to the violent nature of the Old West. At least, that's the way it is in the movies. A close look at two of the frontier's most famous cemeteries - in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas - reveals a different story.

As towns with long-established Old West reputations, Tomb- stone and Dodge City in the 1920s were prime candidates for the national spotlight. Their histories were deeply intertwined, as the former southern Arizona bonanza camp and the Kansas cattle cap- ital shared similar origins, lurid media images, and famous charac- ters. And both communities experienced the rapid growth and inherent instability that characterized nineteenth-century boom- towns. Dodge City was established in 1872 as a center for the buf- falo hide trade, then rose quickly from 1876 until the adoption of

Kevin Britz holds MA. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona. He teaches in the American Studies Department at Kenyon College in Cambier, Ohio.

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THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

quarantine laws in 1885 as a major shipping center for Texas cattle. Tombstone grew into a town overnight, following the discovery of silver in 1878, and flourished until its mines flooded in 1887. Much to the chagrin of local boosters who desperately wanted their com- munities to be seen as pious, stable, and law-abiding, journalists and dime novelists painted lurid portraits of Tombstone and its Kansas cousin as western Sodoms. Despite the sanitizing efforts of turn-of-the-century promoters, dime novels and pulp magazines, the recollections of Bat Masterson and other gunmen, and the novels of Alfred Henry Lewis kept alive Tombstone and Dodge City's wild-and-wooly reputations.

Masterson 's and Lewis's accounts of famous Tombstone and

Dodge City characters provided rich sources for Old West chron- iclers. The series of popular books about Tombstone and the Earp brothers began with Frederick Bechdolt's When the West was Young in 1922, followed by Walter Noble Burns's bestselling Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest in 1927. Dodge City acquired similar promi- nence in the popular imagination with the 1931 publication of Stuart Lake's Wyatt Earp , Frontier Marshal William MacLeod Raines's Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws , published in 1929, featured chapters on both towns. A parade of memoirs accompa- nied these popular chronicles. Robert Wright's 1913 recollection, Dodge City , the Cowboy Capital ; retired Tombstone lawman William

Breakenridge's 1928 autobiography, Helldorado: Bringing Law to the

Mesquite, ; and former vaudevillian Eddie Foy's 1928 reminiscence, Clowning Through Life , highlighted Tombstone and Dodge City's wild heydays. William S. Hart's 1923 film Wild Bill Hickok, along with Law and Order (1932), Frontier Marshal (Fox, 1934, and Twen-

tieth-Century Fox, 1939), and Dodge City (Warner Bros., 1939), paralleled the historic works.

These popular books and movies provided readers and view- ers with graphic images of the Old West that included swaggering gunslingers, stalwart lawmen, gamblers, painted women, lynchings, stage robberies, ramshackle buildings, and assorted vice and may- hem. Twentieth-century tourists expecting to encounter this ver- sion of the West, however, found a much different scene. Writer James Flagg, who drove to Dodge City in 1925 hoping to experi- ence the "fierce romance of the old cow days - where so many herds were driven to and where so many cowpunchers raised their

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" Boot Hill Burlesque"

simple hell until their pay gave out," instead discovered "nothing but a litde town" populated by "lots of cowboys walking the streets in blue overalls." A New York Sun reporter was saddened to find that Dodge City had "no landmarks of the brief era which fur- nished much of the material, real or imaginary, of the dime novel period of . . . American literature."1

The same was true of Tombstone. Journalist Charles Finger arrived in southern Arizona in 1931, expecting to enjoy life in a rollicking Wild West town. He found instead a placid little com- munity where "an indubitable cowboy" leaned against a drugstore wall while licking an ice cream cone. "The first two hours in Tomb- stone," Finger confessed, "proved beyond doubt, that this town, once so boisterous, has passed from its vivid youth to an age of

repose and contentment." A New York Times correspondent shared the impression. "Nowadays the citizens devote only an occasional reminiscent thought to the men who were laid to rest with their boots on in Boot Hill cemetery," he observed. "Real Tombstoners are now more interested in paving bonds."2

In laying the foundations for their respective tourist indus- tries, Tombstone and Dodge City promoters recognized the impor- tance of satisfying visitor expectations, even if it meant dramatically stretching the truth. Tombstone enjoyed the advantage of retain-

ing a large number of vintage buildings in various states of preser- vation. F. M. Loomis, the editor of Motor World and Motor Age, and Robert Manger, the field secretary of the National Automobile Dealer's Association, were impressed in 1920 "by the quaint appearance of the many old landmarks of pioneer days and

expressed their satisfaction of a visit to the historic mining camp of which they had heard so many stirring tales." Dodge City, with few architectural remnants of its romantic past, was scarcely dis-

tinguishable from a typical Kansas farm town. One visiting news-

paper editor was surprised at how much Dodge City differed from the images created by "blood and thunder stories that were told of the town." Only the street that fronted the railroad - "lined with cafes and billiard parlors" - and the crowded business district contained relics of the past. Aging residents in both towns, how- ever, remembered the frontier period and recalled especially the first improvised cemeteries. Increasingly, pilgrims sought out these "boot hill" graveyards for authentic relics of the Wild West.3

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THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

The name "boot hill" may have originated in Dodge City, where it first appeared in print in the May 6, 1877, issue of the

Dodge City Times. According to local historian Robert Eagan, who conducted extensive research on Dodge City's original cemetery, the term frequently appeared in railroad cowtowns, where it referred to improvised municipal graveyards that ultimately became pot- ter's fields. One of the first national uses of boot hill appeared in an article on "New Sharon" - a euphemism for Dodge City - in the March 1880 issue of Scribner's Monthly . Unlike their Dodge City counterparts, who actually used "boot hill" to describe their orig- inal cemetery, Tombstone locals simply called their first graveyard "the old city cemetery." In a 1926 speech, longtime Tombstone resident and former judge John C. Hancock attributed the use of the term to "tenderfoot journalists" who "started to write up the west." Another Tombstonian, when asked about the origin of the term "boothill," answered that the name probably was imported from Dodge City, which in its "heyday . . . was fully as wicked" as the southern Arizona silver camp.4

Like most boomtowns, Dodge City created its first civic ceme-

tery as an ad hoc response to the need in 1872 to find a final rest-

ing place for a dead transient. As the town expanded around it, the improvised burial ground quickly became prime real estate. In 1878, the Dodge City Townsite Company sold it to developers who planned to subdivide the plot into residential lots. To dispel the fears of potential homeowners who might object to living atop a graveyard, the owners persuaded the city to move the bodies to a new cemetery, called Prairie Grove, northwest of town. The coro- ner who disinterred the coffins in 1879 found the corpses "resting quietly with boots on." The headboards, "if ever there were any, had long wasted away," however. Consequently, he was able to iden-

tify only a few individuals. The city, hoping to distance itself from its unsavory past, purchased a lot on Boot Hill and built a school- house. The Hays Sentinel hailed it as "the proudest evidence of

enlightenment upon the one surviving relic of barbarism." The

building was razed in 1890 and replaced by a larger, three-story structure popularly known as the Boot Hill School, which func- tioned effectively for thirty-five years.5

Because the name probably originated in Dodge City, it was

fitting that the reinvention of Boot Hill as a historic tourist attrac-

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" Boot Hill Burlesque "

tion was the pivotal event as the former cattle town looked for ways to commemorate its past. In large part because of a strong post-boom economy, Dodge City lagged behind other Old West towns in developing its tourist trade. By the 1890s, the town had shrugged off its boomtown trappings, and by the First World War, it had evolved into a staid Midwestern community with a growing economy. As the hub of railroad commerce, agriculture, and live- stock, it was the political and mercantile center of western Kansas. Lacking the economic imperative that drove faded mining towns like Tombstone or Deadwood, South Dakota, to market themselves as tourist attractions, Dodge City hesitated to embrace any form of civic commemoration that even hinted at its sordid past. This attitude changed in 1927, when pioneer lawman, mayor, and auto- mobile dealer Hamilton Bell joined fellow business owners in prompting the city to purchase the long-abandoned Boot Hill. The transaction ignited a public debate over how the city should remember its past.

When the Dodge City Board of Education announced in 1925 that it would close the outmoded Boot Hill School and sell the property, Bell and other business leaders, who were already involved in a project to mark historic sites in order to lure tourists to the old Santa Fe Trail, saw the opportunity to create an entic- ing local attraction. "Boot Hill is known coast to coast and could be converted into one of the showplaces of the city," the Dodge City Daily Globe reported, "there is a sentiment here that the historical value of the tract should be capitalized [on]." Kiwanis, Rotary, American Legion, Real Estate Men's Organization, and chamber of commerce representatives petitioned the Dodge City Commis- sion to call for a special election to purchase Boot Hill. Unfortu- nately, the community did not share their enthusiasm. On August 20, 1925, voters defeated the measure by a two-to-one margin. Subsequently, the city sold the site to the Presbyterian Hospital Association, who hoped to convert the old schoolhouse into a hos- pital. Interest in commemorating the site resurfaced two years later, however, when the Presbyterians abandoned their plans for the building and expressed their willingness to sell the Boot Hill parcel at public auction.6

The Dodge City Real Estate Board quickly launched a new campaign to save the old cemetery. Within hours of the hospital

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Hamilton B. Bell.

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"Boot Hill Burlesque"

association's announcement, a petition circulated among business leaders urging the city to purchase Boot Hill. The realtors suc- ceeded in postponing the sale until a $12,000 bond election could be held. In a newspaper ad that ran a week before the election, they reminded voters that "to preserve this historic point is an investment that will return to the taxpayers much more than it will cost. Do not hold Dodge City back. Help push forward. Vote to save Boot Hill." Their tactic paid off. Voters endorsed the res- olution, and on April 20, 1927, Boot Hill became city property.7

Although the city now held the deed to Boot Hill, it remained unclear how the site would be preserved. Opinions divided sharply over how much of the valuable real estate should be allotted to historic commemoration and how much should be set aside for other use. Following eight months of discussion, in December 1927 the city passed a resolution supporting a pro bono proposal from longtime resident Dr. Oscar H. Simpson, a retired dentist and amateur sculptor, to install "a large figure of a western cowboy" at a "commanding position" on Boot Hill. The statue would adorn the entrance to a new city hall that also would be con- structed on the site. The building's Spanish-style architecture would serve as a tribute to Dodge City's location on the Santa Fe Trail and the town's heritage as a former outpost of the Spanish empire.8

The selection of Simpson's plan underscored the growing influence of the Boot Hill preservation movement. Like his friend Hamilton Bell, Simpson was a prominent Dodge City resident with a new-found interest in the town's early history. Following his retirement from dentistry in 1922, Simpson took up concrete sculpture and historical research, publishing several articles in local newspapers. He believed that Dodge City's affiliation with the Old West gave the town great historical significance. It was "unquestionably the most typically western in habits and customs of any town that ever existed," Simpson once told a reporter. In his opinion, it "produced more national characters and notorious gunmen than all the rest of the wild towns of the turbulent west combined, and was longer passing through the gun age." Simp- son's romantic vision of Dodge City's wild past had an ironic twist - he was a longtime prohibitionist who, in the 1880s, had strongly supported closing down the town's saloons.9

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THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

As the first step in memorializing Dodge City's controversial

past, local businessmen encouraged Simpson to commemorate "the

cowboy, whose activities greatly influenced and colored the early day history of Dodge City." As the model for his reinforced con- crete statue, Simpson selected Dodge City chief of police Joe Sughrue. The Dodge City Journal described the completed artwork, which Simpson presented to the city in 1928, as a "long, gaunt, rangy cowboy" brandishing a "trusty six shooter." In the newspa- per's eyes, it "truly described the real cowboy as he was known in the early days." An inscription on the base proudly proclaimed: "On the ashes of my campfire, this city is built." The statue was

formally dedicated on November 4, 1929, as part of a larger cele- bration that included the laying of the cornerstone for the city hall. Members of the local preservation group scattered rocks, sage, cactus, and soapweed around the site to heighten the Old West

atmosphere. The city commission, however, balked at covering the entire hill with native flora.10

Simpson's statue symbolized a confident and prosperous town

ready to embrace its past. Boosters like Simpson and Bell wanted to claim Dodge City's prominent role on the American frontier - a role that an increasing number of popular historians and film- makers were glorifying. By the late 1920s, Dodge City business leaders were flush with pride over their community's commercial and political leadership. The construction of a new Santa Fe Rail-

way terminal and Fred Harvey Hotel, combined with the WWI boom in wheat and livestock production transformed Dodge City into the shipping and financial center of western Kansas. Its popu- lation of 6,039 in 1921 represented a 17 percent increase over the

previous year, making Dodge City the fastest-growing city in the state. By the end of the decade, the population reached 10,000, prompting the Kansas State Board of Agriculture and Editor and Publisher magazine to proclaim Dodge City the "capital of Southwest Kansas." Many local boosters saw the town's triumphs as rewards for the pioneering values of perseverance and steadfastness.11

A decade later, commemoration of the past became an eco- nomic necessity. As the twenties ended, Dodge City reeled from the effects of the national depression even as it found itself at the center of the dust bowl disaster that destabilized the region's agri- cultural economy throughout the 1930s. The impact of the great

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The Simpson cowboy statue.

"dust-out" was reflected in population figures - by 1940, the city had lost nearly one fifth of its residents, with only 8,222 remain-

ing behind.12

Community remembrance took on a new meaning. The line between commemoration as a means of establishing historic iden- tity and as a commercial venture became indistinguishable as Dodge City's economy eroded. How history would be memorial- ized in Dodge City was the subject of a decade-long public debate centered on Boot Hill. Spurred by a sense of economic urgency, the local preservation group formally incorporated as the South- west Historical Society in 1931. Hamilton Bell was the first presi- dent and Oscar Simpson served as a charter officer. Aware that Dodge City had been slow to capitalize on its history, Society members put atop their agenda the creation of a Boot Hill museum that they hoped would someday "be known throughout the nation." The group was confident that the museum would appeal to a new generation of Americans who "had succeeded the actual participants in episodes of those history making days." As evidence of this interest, they pointed out that the question most frequently asked by visitors was: "Where is Boot Hill?"13

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THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

Even local businessmen who did not necessarily believe that a museum was the best approach to luring tourists agreed that it was time for the city to set aside any lingering reservations about its wild-and-wooly reputation and capitalize on Boot Hill's notori-

ety. "Why should Dodge City be ashamed of Boot Hill," the Dodge City Globe asked. "Have we become so goody goody that the days of the primitive, elemental west offends our fine sense of right and wrong?" In a long letter to the Globe, prominent local banker C. C. Sales wondered "why have newspaper men written story after story about Dodge City? Why do magazine writers continue to fea- ture Dodge City in stories which always go over big?" In Sales's eyes, the answer was obvious: "It is because of historic Old Boot Hill." Unless the site was preserved, the inevitable march of

progress would make "old Dodge City" a thing of the past. Sales recommended erecting a simple granite monument, "so that a stranger visiting Dodge City may know he is standing on the site of the Old Boot Hill cemetery; and so future generations may not

forget Boot Hill was a very important part of the stage on which was enacted that great melodrama, the Early Life of Dodge City."14

Furniture owner Joe Hulpieu, also a member of the preser- vation committee, set off a storm of controversy when he proposed installing metal sculptures of wagon trains, buffalo, Indians, and Wyatt Earp to line walkways replicating the Santa Fe Trail and the old-time cattle trails. The project addressed two of Dodge City's pressing problems: providing work for the unemployed and attract- ing tourists.15

Hulpieu introduced his plan to the city commission in Feb- ruary of 1931, only to discover that another local organization felt that the Boot Hill site would better serve the community as tennis courts. The commission members tabled both proposals. When landscaping commenced on Boot Hill a few weeks later, however, rumors spread that the city was in fact levelling the hill in order to install the tennis courts. A rash of telephone calls to newspa- pers and a new "Save Boot Hill" campaign culminated in a large rally at the Lions' Club. Forty club members volunteered to attend the next city commission meeting and protest any attempt to level the site they now referred to as "the center of historical interest in the southwest." Mayor Harry Hart reacted quickly to squelch the rumors, reassuring the Lions' Club and the historical society that

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"Boot Hill Burlesque"

the city was only tidying up the hill. To avoid future misunder-

standing, Hart created a special committee of Lions' Club, Kiwanis, and Southwest Historical Society members to consult with the city park board and draft an official plan for the old cemetery.16

With the promise of attracting tourism revenue to the dust- choked town, the new committee enjoyed a surprising level of pub- lic support for a formal Boot Hill commemoration. A random telephone poll conducted by the Dodge City Globe in March of 1932 found that local sentiment strongly favored preserving the grave- yard site as a historic park. Although one respondent proclaimed Boot Hill the "greatest asset Dodge City has as a tourist attraction," no one ventured a specific plan for the proposed park. A few weeks after the poll, the Southwest Historical Society offered a recom- mendation that set the tone for future discussion. The society envi- sioned erecting on Boot Hill a six-foot replica of a cowboy boot, including spurs.17

Although the historical society's proposal was never adopted, the shape of Boot Hill's first commemoration took on the exag- gerated Old West symbolism that the giant boot represented. Paraphrasing the local Rotary Club motto with their slogan "he

profits most who shoots first," Oscar Simpson and Dodge City Rotarians - including Dodge City Globe publisher Jess C. Denious - constructed a parody of the Boot Hill graveyard, on the actual site, to entertain attendees at the state Rotary convention in May of 1932. Their whimsical recreation included fifteen concrete-cast faces and boots sticking out of mounds formed to resemble graves. Clever hand-painted epitaphs, some of them referring to actual persons, topped each burial plot. Among the more memorable epitaphs were:

Shoot-em up Jake Run for sheriff in 1872 Ran from Sheriff 1876 Buried 1876

* * * *

One Eyed Joe was Slow on the Draw He played five aces and now he plays the harp

* * * *

The Bones of Hiram Burr, who mistook a he-cow for a her.

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The graves were haphazardly arranged to recreate the impro- vised nature of the original cemetery. Some were open to expose fake backbones, ribs, skulls, and other skeletal remains. As proof of Boot Hill's authenticity, one grave featured an actual skeleton. A large dead tree, with a rope dangling from an overhanging branch, towered over the scene. A sign nailed to the trunk announced: "Horse Thief Pete was hung on this tree in 1873."

Although a Globe reporter found the scene "all very sad," Simp- son's creation was so popular with visitors that the city allowed it to remain in place after the Rotary convention adjourned. It

quickly became Dodge City's main tourist attraction.18 For a Lions' convention in June, Simpson dedicated at Boot

Hill an officially sanctioned sculpture of a set of longhorn steer heads. Unlike his earlier graveyard parody, the concrete busts were the center of public fanfare that included a mounted parade of

Dodge City Lions' Club members dressed in cowboy costumes, a

drum-and-bugle corps, and marching bands. The event indicated the community's new willingness to officially embrace its wild-

and-wooly past. To add authenticity, the base of the monument

Dodge City Boot Hill .

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Oscar H. Simpson and steer-head sculpture.

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THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY

was constructed of rock from the old county jail and bore the

inscription: "My trails become your highways." In his dedication

speech, Southwest Historical Society spokesman C. C. Isley placed the monument within the context of national interest in the Old West. "Dozens of magazines for sale in New York and Philadel-

phia," Isley reminded his audience, reaffirmed the need to pre- serve "a fragment of the Old West for our children."19

For the next decade and a half, Simpson's Boot Hill statues - sanctioned and satirical - were Dodge City's only monuments to its past. Lack of money and failure to agree on a specific plan were to blame. Ideas for a Boot Hill memorial ranged from Joe Hulpieu's miniature reproduction of the Santa Fe Trail to a two- room sodhouse, a diorama of old Front Street, and a brass buffalo. Most serious discussions involved Hamilton Bell's museum idea, which city commissioners had endorsed but which never materi- alized due to lack of funds. In the course of the discussion, Dodge City endorsed the comic violence of the revived Boot Hill and acknowledged its commercial success by underwriting advertise- ments and improving the quality of the fake graves. In 1935, the chamber of commerce erected a sign near city hall directed specifically at tourists. "This is Dodge City's famous Boot Hill bur- ial ground of the six-shooting badmen," it announced. At the same time, the city erected more professional-looking versions of Simp- son's crude epitaphs.20

Dodge City's blend of hucksterism and authenticity reached a new level after city commissioners discovered they could exchange the right to sell souvenirs for site maintenance. F. W. Steele, the first sanctioned concessionaire, boasted a reputation as a "pioneer photographer," who had lived in Dodge City from 1891 through 1927. Steele's large photographic collection of the range cattle industry increased in value as interest in the Old West rose in the 1920s. In return for permission to create a point-of-sale site out of an old chuckwagon on Boot Hill, Steele agreed to register guests and oversee publicity. A year later, Steele relinquished his care- taker-concessionaire job to William B. "Dad" Rhodes. Like Steele, Rhodes claimed the mantle of authenticity. A Dodge City resident since 1885, he had pursued successive careers as a farmer, ranch foreman, chief of police, and cement contractor. Following his retirement at age eighty-four, Rhodes offered his services as Boot

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William B. "Dad" Rhodes.

Hill custodian and tour guide in exchange for the right to erect a souvenir stand and information booth.

In September 1936, Rhodes began his decade-long tenure as the living personification of Boot Hill and Dodge City history. The oldtimer took seriously his role as caretaker, site interpreter, and salesman by dressing in cowboy costume complete with hat, boots, red silk shirt, blue bandanna, and heavy gold watch that he used to illustrate the prosperity of Dodge City's early cowboys. Over time, Rhodes made the hill his private interpretive site. He built a picket fence around the graveyard, alongside his souvenir and information booth, and supplemented Simpson's statues with his own exhibits. In addition, he offered tourists a personal inter-

pretation of Boot Hill and Dodge City's rowdy past. At the time of his second retirement - at age ninety-four - in 1946, the commu-

nity viewed Rhodes as "a showman of the highest regard."21 Dad Rhodes's historical showmanship complemented a mar-

keting campaign designed to transform Boot Hill and Dodge City into major tourist destinations. On the heels of an advertising campaign directed by Hamilton Bell, publisher and fellow South- west Historical Society member Harry Carey, and members of the

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chamber of commerce travel committee, Boot Hill visitation fig- ures rose to 200 daily in the 1930s. Town promoters highlighted Dodge City's identification with the Wild West by suggesting that the police dress in cowboy attire and mount horses in order to attract publicity and answer tourist questions.22

The cornerstone of the marketing effort was the publication in 1937 of the town's first promotional pamphlet, The Thrilling Story of Famous Boot Hill. Written by Harry Carey, the publication's 10,000 copies were distributed to gas stations and information centers across the state. Carey's booklet marked a departure from

previous Dodge City booster literature. Instead of extolling the virtues of the contemporary community, Carey appealed to visi- tors' strong interest in Dodge City history. The Thrilling Story of Famous Boot Hill lured tourists with grainy historic photographs and lively descriptions of buffalo hunts, cattle drives, famous law- men, Fort Dodge, and of course the "famous Boot Hill." Carey rel-

egated modern Dodge City to a half page at the end. The book's cover underscored the split between past and present. The first half of the subtitle - "Old Dodge 'The Cowboy Capital'" -

appeared underneath a drawing of a cowboy hat covering a pistol; the rest of the subtitle - "and modern Dodge City" - was printed below an illustration of a mounted cowboy firing a rifle.23

As Boot Hill's popularity grew - a total of 358,000 people had visited the site by 1946 - some Dodge City residents struggled to come to grips with the town's kitschy approach to its past. Some business and community leaders continued to view the old grave- yard as a milestone in the city's progress. A 1935 column in the Dodge City Journal promoted Boot Hill as a testimonial to the eter- nal struggle of human virtue, lofty thought, and gallantry to over- come the forces of depredation, beastliness, ignorance, greed, and sadism. "Boot Hill is not really a monument to history but merely an episode," the editorial concluded.24

A Dodge City Daily Globe reporter took a more realistic approach. An article entitled "Boot Hill Burlesque" observed that tourists appeared to take only peripheral interest in monuments to authentic history - the cowboy statue, steer busts, and the bell that once hung in Dodge City's first church. "Many visitors," the author noted, "seemed more interested in the bogus attractions" such as the hangman's tree and cement faces in the graveyard.

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"Boot Hill Burlesque"

"Fakes may not be real history," he concluded, "but the visitors

certainly lap them up." Both the reporter and local promoters had stumbled onto a truism of early twentieth-century enterprise: the Old West was a commodity that required only a pretext of

authenticity to be marketable. Dodge City accepted the premise when it gave Boot Hill its official blessing.25

Tombstone closely followed Dodge City's lead in transform-

ing its long-abandoned original cemetery into a leading tourist attraction. Tombstone's graveyard had the advantage over its Mid- western counterpart of possessing both an authentic location and its original inhabitants. Like Dodge City boosters, Tombstone pro- moters were awakened by outside publicity and galvanized by the

fight for community approval to recraft the old cemetery as a civic attraction. But unlike Dodge City, Tombstone was motivated by more than economic incentives. The former silver camp, suffer-

ing from civic embarrassment over the community's decades-long neglect of its old graveyard, wanted to avoid bad publicity from

disappointed tourists who arrived to view the town's historic boothill.

Where Dodge City Boot Hill had remained a part of the town's public memory because of the Boot Hill School, Tomb- stone's original cemetery was forgotten, neglected, and ultimately rediscovered. The site had served as the makeshift official burial

ground from 1879 until a new cemetery was created in 1884. The

original graveyard, referred to locally as the "old cemetery," was

forgotten until 1919, when journalist Frederick Bechdolt pub- lished a series of Tombstone articles in The Saturday Evening Post. His 1922 book, When the West Was Young, affixed the term "Boot Hill" to the old cemetery. Bechdolt painted a romanticized por- trait of frontier cemeteries, specifically Tombstone's Boot Hill, as relics of a time when "there was no law save that of might." The old Tombstone burial ground was a splendid example of the Old West's gradual demise in the face of progress and civilization. "Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the

ridge," Bechdolt wrote, "cacti and ocatilla [5¿c] sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the head- boards and long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mis- take." Some headboards bore faint epitaphs "which tell how death came to strong men in the full flesh of youth." But the "majority

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were simply cedar slabs whose penciled legends the elements have long since washed away." Boot Hill's natural setting enhanced its romantic appeal. "The sun shines hot here on the summit of the

ridge," Bechdolt observed. "Across the wide mesquite flat the

granite ramparts of the Dragoons frown all the long day, and the bleak hill graveyard frowns back at them. Thus the men who came to this last resting-place frowned back at death."26

Tourists who arrived in Tombstone expecting to see Bech- dolťs windswept monument to the Old West found something quite different. Frank Moy, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, described how "among the desert briars which cover the hill between the cairns are piles of tin cans, broken botdes, rusted pots and pans, old shoes, and all the rubbish of modern city homes." Criticism mounted as growing numbers of tourists visited Bechdolťs Boot Hill. A Canadian, who traveled to Tombstone in 1925 specifically to pay his respects at the pioneer graveyard, called it the "most pathetic dump" he had ever seen. The same individual was shocked to find Dodge City's Boot Hill "obliterated" and replaced with a schoolhouse. Still, it did not compare to Tombstone's "des- ecration of such a sacred relic." John Cium, founder of the Tomb-

Tombstone Boothill. (AHS/SAD #5190)

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"Boot Hill Burlesque "

stone Epitaph and the town's first mayor in the early 1880s, con- fessed that when he returned decades later to visit his wife's final resting place, he was unable to locate either the grave or the ceme- tery. The experience was "most depressing." The Phoenix Arizona Gazette lambasted Tombstone's lack of pride in its pioneers. Even Tombstone mayor O. Gibson admitted that "neglect of a burial ground is a sad enough reflection on a community, but rubbish

deliberately cast on such ground is a disgrace."27 Tombstone promoters heeded the call to action. Arlington

H. Gardiner, secretary of the Tombstone Commercial Club, rec- ognized the cemetery's commercial potential and led the drive to turn it into a tourist attraction. Gardiner persuaded other boosters to adopt officially the name "Boothill" and enlisted Mayor Gibson as a supporter. In 1923, Gardiner and Gibson convinced a Boy Scout troop to start cleaning up the graveyard. As the city realized the magnitude of the task, in March of 1925 it appealed to the state

legislature for funds. Gardiner and Gibson argued that the peo- ple of Tombstone should not have to bear sole responsibility for

rehabilitating a national historic site, where pioneers "went over the hill with their boots on, in protection of themselves and their families and for the preservation of law and order, so that we who are here today could enjoy the liberties and opportunities of this day." When the bill failed, Mayor Gibson asked Frederick Bechdolt, Badger Clark, and other famous western writers to donate money to match John Clum's cash contribution to build a fence around Boothill and identify graves based on a survey by local civil engi- neer John Rockfellow. Gibson's efforts came to naught and by June the city once again turned to the Boy Scouts and other vol- unteer organizations to pick up the garbage that littered the site.28

Gardiner and Gibson next enlisted Tombstone Epitaph editor Frank Moy in their crusade to revitalize Boothill. The Epitaph exhorted the community to do more than build a fence and pick up trash. Moy urged locals to recognize the cemetery as a poten- tial tourist attraction and appealed to their pride in the past. "No remnant of the good old, bad hectic days of Tombstone is more intriguing to the imagination than this place of mystery," he reminded his fellow citizens. "Who were these people buried on the hill whose slopes face the rising sun? Were they the two-gun men; the stage robbers; the feudists; the cattle rustlers; the gam-

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biers; the cowmen, young and restless of life? Or were they the common, quiet householders, the fathers of little children, the ranchers, the miners?" Moy regretted that no one knew the answers to these questions. The only headstone still standing in the old cemetery marked the burial plot of M. L. Peel, a mining engineer murdered in nearby Charleston.29

Although Moy's challenge brought the Boothill issue to cen- ter stage, the completion of U.S. Highway 80 - the "Broadway of America" - crystallized efforts to transform the burial ground into a fullblown tourist attraction. In 1932, the Tombstone Chamber of Commerce, as official custodians of Boothill, prepared the site for the thousands of visitors they anticipated would arrive on the new interstate. Gardiner, after visiting Dodge City's Boot Hill, found common ground in the two communities' approach to their marketable past. Because the Tombstone cemetery con- tained actual bodies, it could emphasize its authenticity as a relic of the Old West.30

Gardiner, therefore, enlisted the help of Henry Macia, a for- mer mine manager and local restaurant and lodge owner, to begin the long process of identifying and marking graves. Reinstallation of headboards commemorating the town's most famous inci- dents - the O.K. Corral gunfight and the four Bisbee robbers

legally hanged in 1884 - was a top priority. The chamber of com- merce asked local residents to assist Macia by furnishing any knowl-

edge they might possess of other bodies interred at the site so that "authentic information" could be posted. Frank Vaughn, a former Tombstone resident who had buried the Clantons and McLaurys after the O.K. Corral fight, lent a hand. Vaughn pinpointed the

grave sites and reproduced the headboard text. Meanwhile, six workmen refurbished the grounds by identifying grave sites, dri-

ving crowbars into the earth to relocate coffins and bones, filling and rounding plots with dirt, and clearing the spaces between

graves to make the cemetery what the Tombstone Epitaph described as a "credit to our little town."31

The conclusion of the big push came in late 1932, when the chamber of commerce reached an understanding with the Arizona

Highway Department on the commercial importance of the

cemetery. The highway department granted the town permission to construct a by-way to the site marked with a six-by-twelve foot

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black-and-white sign that could be easily seen and photographed by passing tourists.32

By January 1933, a new sign - "Welcome to Tombstone and Boothill Graveyard" - greeted incoming motorists on Highway 80. The words made the town and its past one and the same. One writer called it the "very essence of Tombstone history." The sign conjured up images of "gun battles, hangings, murders, lynch- ing . . . the stories of Tombstone at the height of its wild and extrav-

agant glory."33 Increased visitation validated the town's embrace of its fron-

tier past. The San Antonio Evening Herald called Tombstone's Boothill a "paying graveyard" that provided people with "reminders of a rip-roaring past." According to the local chamber of commerce, the town was "now being considered by many writ- ers and touring directors as one of the great drawing cards of the southwest." Tombstone promoters tried to convince the state

highway commission to erect a black manganese monument in the form of an Indian teepee with a copper plaque dedicated to the unknown soldiers buried in Boothill. By 1937, city flyers proudly promoted the "quaint burial ground" as the popular selec-

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tion for "outstanding tourist attraction for tourists along the Broad- way of America."34

At first, the anonymity of the graves enhanced Boothill's Wild West mystique. As late as 1936, only fifteen of an estimated eighty burials were positively identified. The sparsity of identifiable graves testified to the violent end of the deceased and reinforced Bech- dolťs image of a fading West. Frank Moy speculated that "who- ever they were, they died with their boots on, as was befitting a

regular western, he-man guy." As early as 1925, the Arizona Daily Star referred to the "outlaw cemetery," where anonymous men were unceremoniously buried in "a lonely grave just six by three." In 1930, radio commentator Andy Anderson described Boothill as a "desolate, wind-swept cemetery," whose burial inscriptions were "worn away long ago and whatever grass there may have been has yielded to the desert." It was "not much of a cemetery," he concluded, "but appropriate, somehow, for men who died with their boots on." Another reporter referred to Boothill as a place where few could "claim distinction for their good deeds - for many were murderers." Bernice Cosulich, writing for the Arizona Daily Star in 1929, recounted how "180 pioneers, miners, gamblers and

two-gun men" were buried in the lonely graveyard. "Some of those died natural deaths," she told her readers, "but many were shot or hung. . . . How many thrilling stories of Indian raids, saloon fights, and mine claim jumping lie buried?" Even the New York Times

Magazine called Boothill a "gray, barren promontory. . . . Under its slabs those old days of violence lie buried, along with their vic- tims." Rupert Larson, writing for Progressive Arizona , felt Boothill

proved "that in the early days of Tombstone it was more fashion- able to pass out violently than peacefully."35

Eventually, the absence of grave markers clashed with Tomb- stone's claim on authenticity. As long as Boothill sported a hand- ful of tombstones that recalled its violent past - the O.K. Corral casualties and victims such as M. L. Peel, alongside such charac- ters as Dutch Annie and Indian Bill - visitors were free to imagine the cemetery as a "monument to the swashbuckling men and women who settled the frontier." The common belief that the graveyard was exclusively the resting place of bad men abruptly ended, however, with Mrs. F. E. Smith's arrival in Tombstone. A Missourian, Mrs. Smith was searching for the grave of her mother,

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(AHS/SAD #52094)

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Quong Kee (right). (AHS/SAD #4866)

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"Boot Hill Burlesque "

Flora Stumph, who died in a dentist's chair from the effects of anesthesia in 1884. Inquiries led Smith to an unidentified iron- fenced plot described by her late father. Within a week after her departure, the possibility that an ordinary housewife was buried on Boothill raised a storm of local controversy. Some Tombstone residents questioned the body's location. One former resident, living in Los Angeles, argued that because "Boothill was reserved" for men and women who died in "debauchery or lawlessness," there must have been another cemetery where upstanding citizens were interred. Stumph 's niece, who lived in Phoenix, settled the controversy by traveling to Tombstone and verifying her aunt's burial plot. Embarrassed by the publicity surrounding the episode, the Tombstone City Council ordered markers and accelerated efforts to identify graves.36

The Stumph affair afforded proof that Boothill was final home to more than victims of violence. Less than a year after the controversy, the city, the chamber of commerce, the local Ameri- can Legion post, the Tombstone Epitaph , and a new promotional group called the Boothill Boosters turned a fresh burial into a publicity stunt for the cemetery's pioneer origins. When former Tombstone restaurant owner Quong Kee died impoverished in Bisbee in early 1938, Epitaph editor Walter Cole persuaded pub- lisher and former Tombstone resident Columbus Giragi, along with Arizona Daily Star manager George Chambers, to pay for a Boot- hill burial. Generating support for the venture was easy. As reporter Bernice Cosulich put it, "a kindly but profane character, stranded on the beach of modernity, flotsam from the past," the ninety- seven-year-old Kee was widely considered a link with the old days.37

Kee's burial marked the shift from the outlaw ballyhoo of the previous decade. The restaurant owner, by virtue of his ethnic her- itage and community status, affirmed the belief of many locals that the gunfighter hyperbole was a disservice to the hardworking mer- chants, miners, and ranchers who were Tombstone's true builders. Speakers at the sunrise Easter burial service praised Kee as a man "never accustomed to the handle of a six-shooter, but rather the handle of a frying pan." Longtime resident Ethel Macia described the Boothill cemetery as a monument to Tombstone's unheralded pioneers. In a statewide radio talk sponsored by the Boothill Boost- ers, she spoke of the old graveyard as the place where "many of

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Tombstone's finest people were laid to rest: the wife of the mayor, the baby son of a physician, the young daughter of a business man ... as well as those who helped to make the glamorous blood and thunder history." To dispel the notion that Boothill was exclusively an outlaw resting ground, Macia told listeners that the cemetery had once contained both Chinese and Jewish sections. The cere- mony concluded with the unveiling of a petrified wood monument over Quong Kee's grave.38

The Stumph and Kee incidents also altered the way Tomb- stone marketed Boothill. Promotional brochures published in the late thirties touted the "famous Boot Hill grave yard" as home of "180 graves of persons in all walks of life." A later brochure

depicted the cemetery as a "last resting place for pioneers of the Old West" - a place where "outlaws and peaceful citizens alike are buried." Even so, popular writers were reluctant to abandon the earlier lawless image. For example, Joseph Miller, in a 1938 Arizona Highways article, focused specifically on the graves of the Clan tons and McLaurys, and the four Bisbee robbers. A decade later, Lenora Brimmer took a more evenhanded approach when she wrote that

Quong Kee's funeral (AHS/SAD #72009)

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Quong Kee's grave. (AHS/SAD # 15396)

a visit to Boothill is "to recapture the spirit of the frontier." While acknowledging the "good people who made up the background," Brimmer dedicated the lion's share of her article to the cemetery's "outlaw section."39

Popularity haunted the famous burial ground as souvenir hunters took pieces of Boothill home with them. A year after the dedication of Quong Kee's monument, the city erected a sharp- needled ocotillo fence in an attempt to keep out relic collectors. By 1944, the Quong Kee memorial had been chiseled down to its cement base and its protective ocotillo fence had been stolen. Only four graffiti-covered headboards erected by the chamber of commerce remained standing elsewhere in the cemetery. Out- raged by this desecration of the "Shrine of America," Epitaph reporter Juanita Igo reminded her fellow citizens of their "duty to posterity" and warned of the dire consequences to the tourist trade of a rundown Boothill. Igo urged the city to hire a guard and charge admission to raise funds for restoring the cemetery.40

The solution came a year later when Tombstone, following Dodge City's lead, traded concessionaire privileges for custodian-

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ship. In 1945, former mine operator and contractor Emmett

Nunnelly, like Dodge City's Dad Rhodes a Wild West buff, was authorized to operate a souvenir stand in exchange for daily upkeep of the graveyard. For more than a year, Nunnelly and his wife Lela cleaned up the site and continued the task of research-

ing the graves and erecting metal markers. The small, vandal-

proof signs were cast in cement to prevent theft. When Nunnelly died in his Boothill office in November 1946, the city, as a gesture of thanks, allowed his burial in the old cemetery. After her hus- band's death, Lela Nunnelly expanded the souvenir stand, installed restrooms at the city council's behest, and in 1952 pub- lished an official Boothill guide.41

Tombstone's Boothill and its Dodge City counterpart illus- trate how economic and political needs sanctioned the blending of myth and memory in the New West. Closely intertwined by his- toric parallels, lurid reputations, and shared characters, both towns

capitalized on a post-WWI wave of jazz-age tourists seeking to expe-

Tombstone Boothill. (AHS/SAD # 100,400 )

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"Boot Hill Burlesque"

rience the Old West. These pilgrims, their curiosity aroused by movies and popular literature, looked for the lingering glory of the frontier. Tombstone and Dodge City's "boot hills" - the famous

resting places of perpetrators and victims who "died with their boots on" - were among the most popular Old West shrines. Unfor- tunately, contemporary reality seldom lived up to media-fueled expectations. Instead of lonely, windswept cemeteries that afforded morbid evidence of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Curly Bill, and Johnny Ringo's handiwork, visitors to Dodge City found a schoolhouse on the site of the frontier cemetery while Tombstone tourists encountered an abandoned graveyard func- tioning as a garbage dump. As civic promoters in the 1920s and thirties recognized the market value of their old cemeteries, busi- ness leaders and local historians formed alliances with city gov- ernments to transform their abandoned burial sites into tourist attractions. In the process, Tombstone and Dodge City's infamous Wild West reputations became official community memory. In their efforts to attract visitors, the two towns not only gave death a new twist, they also made their neglected burial grounds symbols of an Old West that blended kitsch, hucksterism, and authenticity.

The expansion of tourism compelled Tombstone and Dodge City governments to lend a hand where community commitment was lacking. Their respective chambers of commerce acted as semi- official city agencies, setting agendas for promotion, assuming responsibility for physical maintenance of their boot hill ceme- teries, directing volunteers, and allocating funds. Civic promoters like Tombstone's Arlington Gardiner and Dodge City's Hamilton Bell facilitated the process. Boot hill cemeteries were not only emblems of the Old West, they were also profitable commercial enterprises.

Local businessmen perceived their community's western her-

itage in the same economic terms as silver tailings, wheat, or live- stock, as they exploited Tombstone and Dodge City's moments of notoriety in order to give their towns historic - and civic - distinc- tion. The danger of developing local attractions that satisfied market cravings was the temptation to overemphasize, and even fictionalize, the sensational elements of the past. Too much huck- sterism undercut the expectations of authenticity that attracted tourists. Still, so long as tourists expected the Old West to reflect

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images they carried with them, then city promoters were careful not to disappoint them. This meant selective embellishment of gunslingers, outlaws, and prostitutes and less emphasis on more mundane aspects of local history such as town building.

Courtney Ryley Cooper, writing in 1930 for The Saturday Evening Post , described it as a national phenomenon that grew from "the fact that the general public, looking to the West as the one great romantic spot of America, wants its West as raw as pos- sible." According to Cooper, tourists expected that "every mining camp must have been a lawless, brawling camp with vigilantes working overtime and every tree decorated with human fruit." As the last generation of witnesses to the frontier moment slowly dis- appeared, newer residents adopted the tourist version of the past. At about the same time, writer Charles Finger found that some Tombstonians were more than willing to provide him with the Wild West he craved. One "old rapscallion," whom Finger described as "a well-developed agency of information," took him on a tour of the old sites, embellishing his descriptions with personal recollec- tions of gunfights, gambling houses, and outlaws. Only later did Finger learn that his guide had lived in Michigan until 1929, when he came to Tombstone to earn his living as an umbrella maker.42

NOTES

1. James Flagg, Boulevards All the Way - Maybe (New York: George Doran Company, 1925), p. 95; New York Sun, December 5, 1928. 2. Charles Finger, Adventure Under Sapphire Skies (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1931), pp. 113-14; New York Times , February 21, 1929. 3. Tombstone Epitaph, March 14, 1920; Dodge City Journal, March 9, 1922. 4. Notebook 1, Box 1, Robert Eagan Collection, Western History Department, Denver Pub- lic Library; Tombstone Epitaph, April 1, 1926, and August 2, 1928; "Over Sunday in New Sharon," Scribner's Monthly, vol. 19 (March 1880), p. 773. According to the author, the New Sharon [Dodge City] Boot Hill cemetery was named for its residents, who had died with their boots on. He counted thirty-eight graves, two of them containing women, irregularly laid out. "The place seemed to us an ill-favored one to tarry in on such a perfect and enjoy- able day," he concluded. The spelling varies. Dodge City adopted "Boot Hill" as the offi- cial designation for its pioneer cemetery, while Tombstone settled on "Boothill." 5. Dodge City Times, May 4, 1878; Ford County Globe (Kansas), February 4, May 31, 1879; Dodge City Journal, July 16, 1925; Robert E. Eagan, "Boot Hill Victims and What Happened to Them," p. 5, manuscript, Eagan Collection. 6. Dodge City Daily Globe, February 4 and April 2, 1927; Dodge City Commission (DCC) Min- utes, July 1 and 15, 1925, Eagan Collection. 7. Dodge City Daily Globe, April 2, 1927; DCC Minutes, April 20, 1927. 8. Dodge City Daily Globe, September 21, 1929.

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9. Dodge City and Ford County, Kansas , 1870-1920: Pioneer Histories and Stones (Dodge City, Kans.: Ford County Historical Society, 1996), pp. 304-305; Dodge City Journal, July 5, 1928. 10. Dodge City Journal, December 21, 1927, March 28, 1928; Dodge City Globe, December 22, 1927, March 26, 1931; Ida Ellen Rath, "Dr. O. H. Simpson," Boot Hill file, Kansas Heritage Center, Dodge City. Simpson's previous artistic experience included sculpting small elephants and frogs, as well as an elk's head for the Dodge City Elk's Club. A reporter later described Police Chief Sughrue as "almost as homely as the Simpson statue." Dodge City Globe, February 1, 1971. 11. Dodge City Globe, October 31, 1921; Dodge City Journal, May 2, December 3, 1929. 12. A Comprehensive Planning Survey of Dodge City, Kansas (Lawrence: University of Kansas Bureau of Government Research, 1950), p. 6. See also, Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 13. Dodge City Daily Globe, February 9, 1932. 14. Ibid., May 11, 1931. 15. Ibid., November 11, 1931. 16. Ibid., February 18, March 2 and 3, 1932. 17. Ibid., March 14, April 5, 1932. 18. Ibid., March 9, 1932, and March 4, 1971; Clipping, n.d., in scrapbook, Lois Bryson Col- lection, 1989.43.10, Box 59, Boot Hill Museum Archives (BHMA), Dodge City. 19. Dodge City Journal, April 28, June 6, 1932; DCC Minutes, April 27, 1932. 20. Dodge City Journal, January 18, June 18, September 14, 1935. 21. Ibid., October 10, 1935; February 21, 1947. 22. Ibid., July 26, 1937. 23. Henry Carey, The Thrilling Story of Famous Boot Hill (Dodge City: Etrick Printers, 1937); Dodge City Globe, September 14, 1937. 24. Clipping, n.d., Boot Hill Research File, BHMA; Dodge City Journal, December 19, 1935. 25. Dodge City Globe, July 10, 1936. 26. Frederick Bechdolt, When the West Was Young (New York: The Century Company, 1922), pp. 277-78. 27. Frank Moy, Tombstone Epitaph Annual Resource Edition (1925), p. 22; Tombstone Epitaph, March 6, 13, 27, and June 26, 1925. 28. Tombstone Epitaph, April 21, 1938; Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), March 22, 1925; Ben Tray- wick, Tombstone's Boothill (Tombstone: Red Marie's Bookstore, 1994), p. 4. 29. Moy, Tombstone Epitaph Annual Resource Edition, p. 22. Most of the original wooden head- stones were removed by local residents years earlier and used for firewood. Harry Carr, The West is Still Wild (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), p. 53. 30. Tombstone Epitaph, January 11, 1934. 31. Ibid., January 1, 1931, and May 26, November 11, 1932; unidentified clipping, April 6, 1933, in Tombstone Ephemeral File, Arizona Department of Library, Archives, and Public Records (ADLAPR), Phoenix. 32. Tombstone Epitaph, January 1, May 26, 1931; September 1, December 1, 1932. 33. Unidentified clipping, August 14, 1934, in Tombstone Ephemeral File, ADLAPR. 34. Tombstone Epitaph, April 6, 1936; Souvenir of Tombstone, 1937, Pamphlet 14, Special Col- lections, University of Arizona Library (SC, UAL), Tucson. 35. Tombstone Epitaph, November 22, 1936; San Diego Union, November 20, 1927; Arizona Daily Star, March 13, 1927, February 10, 1929; Andy Anderson Biographical File, Arizona Histori- cal Society, Tucson; Unidentified clipping, November 22, 1936, in Tombstone Ephemeral File, ADLAPR; William A. Du Puy, "Tombstone Quickens to the New Deal," New York Times Magazine, April 1, 1934; Rupert Larson, "Exploring a Once Wild and Woolly Town," Progres- sive Arizona, vol. 4 (May 1927), p. 15. Robert Frothingham, Trails Through the Golden West (New York: Robert McBride & Company, 1932), p. 28, also refers to the "outlaw graveyard."

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36. Unidentified clippings, November 22, 1936, and July 29, August 5, 1937, in Tombstone Ephemeral File, ADLAPR; Arizona Daily Star, July 30, 1937; Arizona Republic (Phoenix), October 3, 1937. 37. Arizona Republic, April 7, 1937, January 13, 1938. At one time, a large number of Chi- nese Americans were buried in the old cemetery. According to local belief, the bones were removed and taken back to China when the Chinese families left the area. Ibid., April 21, 1938; Arizona Daily Star, January 16, 1938. 38. Tombstone Epitaph, April 21, 1938. 39. Tombstone Town Tattler (Tombstone: Chamber of Commerce, n.d.), Pamphlet 9; Tomb- stone, Arizona. Health-History-Hospitality, Pamphlet 10, SC, UAL. Joseph Miller, "Here Lie the Bodies," Arizona Highways, vol. 14 (March 1938), p. 18; Leona Brimmer, "Boothill Graveyard," ibid., vol. 24 (January 1948), pp. 12, 15. 40. Tombstone Epitaph, June 29, 1944. 41. Ibid., November 11, 1946; April 28, 1938; July 22, 1949. Brimmer, "Boothill Graveyard," p. 17. Fiftieth Anniversary Helldorado Program (Tombstone: Helldorado, Inc., 1979), p. 20; Lisa B. Nunnelly, "A Descriptive List of the More than 250 Graves in Boothill," pamphlet, both in SC, UAL. 42. Courtney Ryley Cooper, "Another Redskin Bit the Dust," Saturday Evening Post, August 2, 1930, p. 106; Finger, Adventure Under Sapphire Skies, pp. 119-20.

CREDITS - The photographs on pages 261, 219, 222, 223, and 225 are courtesy of the Boot Hill Museum, Dodge City, Kansas. The photographs on pages 228, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, and 238 are courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson.

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