Front:
OUR TRAILS HAVE BECOME YOUR HIGHWAYS
SEVEN MILLION LONG HORNS WERE MARKETED FROM DODGE CITY
DURING THE 70's AND 80's LEST WE FORGET
MODELED BY 0. H. SIMPSON, D. D. S.
2 A-1287
Back:
30 8
un-
ORIGIN OF B O O T HILL,
DODGE CITY. KANSAS
During the golden gun age of the West, in 1872,
Boot Hill, the coffinless grave yard, was started,
when two gun toters, who were camping on the
little hill, engaged in a gun fight. One was killed
and the other drove away. As there was no
dertaker in this
young town, the unfortunate
plainsman was allowed to lay where he fell the
greater part of the day. When two laboring men
returned home their wives told them of the
tragedy. So in the shades of night they went with
their shovels and dug a shallow grave by the side
of the unfortunate victim, and he was buried with-
out prayer, ceremony, song, or the 1emoval of boots.
few weeks another knight of the border
fell in a gun fight over the favor of some be-
witching dance hall maiden, and he, too, was planted
this embryonic grave yard, with his
his boots
removed and placed under his head a pillow.
Thus this historical tract was located, and named
by accident.
In the next six years, or by 1878, the graves
had increased in number
to
43-five of which
were filled by women.
Only the fiiendless and the notorious dead were
interred in this unusual cemetery. The local people
buried their head at Fort Dodge. In 1878 the
bodies were removed from Boot Hill, and a school
house was erected the:eon, and in 1927 Dodge
City purchased it as a site for the new city hall.
In a
MADE BY CURT TEICH & Co., INC., CHICAGO, U.S.A.
in
as
Boot Hill history attracted
many visitors from over Kan-
sas during the Baptist conven-
tion in Dodge City. Thursday
morning a party stood at the
Cowboy statue and one elderly
man tapped it with his pencil
and remarked, "Yessir, it's ce-
ment," and another man jotted
down notes, while a woman yisit-
or remarked the detail, even to
“the wrinkles in his er-trousers,
thus amusing other members of
the party who explained the
wearing of chaps. Qch, 15-18
1934.
