Boothill Cemetery

Boothill Cemetery was established under the name Tombstone Cemetery in 1878, one year after the discovery of silver by a U.S. army scout in the region. Considered to be one of the last boomtowns of the West, Tombstone grew exponentially between its official founding in 1879 and the early 1880's. Over the course of these years, the city became notorious for its gambling, prostitution, crime, and violence. Well-known Western lawmen and outlaws such as the Clanton Brothers, the Conchise County Cowboys, the McLaury Brothers, the Earp Brothers, and Doc Holliday all resided in Tombstone during this time period. Most famously, Tombstone is where the Cowboys and the Earps had their famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral on the afternoon of October 26, 1881. The 30-second-long shootout resulted in the deaths of outlaws Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury. All three were buried at Tombstone's cemetery and are still among the cemetery's most famous interments.

The cemetery is also home to the gravesites of five out of the six Conchise County Cowboy outlaws behind the Bisbee Massacre of December 8, 1883- in which the men murdered four people (including a lawmen and a pregnant woman) during a robbery. John Heath, who organized the robbery, was sentenced to life in prison but then lynched on February 22, 1884. A marker was placed in Boothill for Heath, but his body was returned to his wife in Terrell, Texas. The five other men were executed by hanging on March 28, 1884, making them the first people to be legally hanged in Tombstone.

Another famous resident of the cemetery is Mrs. Ah Lum, commonly known as "China Mary", who owned a successful general store and was widely regarded as one of Tombstone's shrewdest investors and most well-liked members of the community. Boothill was segregated with two plots for its sizable minority populations- one for Chinese burials, and one for Jewish burials. In 1991, a memorial made of rocks from the Arizona hilltops was dedicated in honor of the Jewish pioneers and Native peoples of the region.

By 1884, the cemetery was mostly full and a new one was created in another part of the town. Boothill was then simply called Old Cemetery. It didn't receive its current name of Boothill until the mid-1900's when literature and film began popularizing stories about the "Wild West". Many cemeteries in boomtowns like Tombstone became known as "Boot Hills", since most of the burials were men who died violent and sudden deaths "with their boots on". Tombstone's Boothill Cemetery continues to be one of the most well-known of these cemeteries and has become a popular tourist attraction in recent decades.

Due to its popularity, some gaps in the histories of Boothill Cemetery's residents have been filled by hearsay and legend over the years. This can be seen in the darkly humorous epigraphs which have appeared on some of the cemetery's markers over the years. One for a man purportedly named Les Moore reads- "Here Lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a 44, no Les, no more." Although there is no record of anyone named Lester Moore dying in Arizona Territory, the epigraph is one of the most oft-repeated in the world.

Robbins, Ted. A Wild Resting Place For Gunslingers And Cowboys, NPR. August 14th 2012. Accessed October 9th 2020. https://www.npr.org/2012/08/14/158585753/a-wild-resting-place-for-gunslingers-and-cowboys.

Shueh, Sam; Chen, Eric. Chinese Residents in Tombstone Arizona, Tombstone Times. Accessed November 4th 2020. https://tombstonetimes.com/chinese-in-tombstone-arizona/.

Sirota, David. Tombstone Cemetery Call to Action, The University of Arizona. Accessed October 9th 2020. https://swja.library.arizona.edu/content/tombstone-cemetery-call-action.

Weiser, Kathy. John Heath and the Bisbee Massacre, Legends of America. June 28th 2012. Accessed November 4th 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20120628070429/http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-johnheath.html.