Tombstone's 1878 Frontier Cemetery and OK Corral Burial Site
408 N AZ-80, Tombstone, AZ 85638
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Small entry fee for the cemetery. Check Tombstone Chamber of Commerce for current rate.
Access
Limited Access
Gravel and packed-dirt paths through open desert cemetery; stones and rough ground throughout
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1878 · National Historic Landmark District · Gunfight at the OK Corral Burial Site · Tombstone Silver Boom · Frontier-Era Burial Ground
Boothill Graveyard opened in 1878 as the original burial ground for Tombstone, Arizona — a silver-mining boomtown that grew from desert to 7,000 residents within four years of Ed Schieffelin's 1877 strike. The cemetery served until 1884, when the new Tombstone City Cemetery opened a half-mile west and burials at the old site largely ceased. By the early 20th century, the graveyard had fallen into disrepair. A community restoration effort beginning in the 1940s identified, marked, and indexed the surviving graves using period newspaper accounts, mortuary records, and oral history.
Approximately 250 men, women, and children are interred at the site. The cemetery's demographic record is unusually complete for a frontier burial ground: cowboys, vaqueros, Chinese immigrants from Tombstone's Hop Town district, miners, formerly enslaved people who arrived after the Civil War, soldiers from nearby Fort Huachuca, women working in the saloon and crib district, children carried off by diphtheria and pneumonia, lawmen, and the outlaws they hunted. The wooden markers, most replaced during the restoration, record cause of death in plain language: "Shot," "Hanged," "Murdered," "Killed by Indians," "Suicide," "Smallpox," "Mining accident."
The cemetery's national reputation rests largely on the burials from the October 26, 1881, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Three men killed in that thirty-second exchange — Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury — were buried at Boothill side by side. Their joint grave is marked with a stone reading "Murdered in the Streets of Tombstone, 1881." The Earp partisans are buried elsewhere; the Clanton-McLaury inscription reflects the political alignment of the cowboy faction's surviving family.
The name "Boot Hill," sometimes attributed to the 19th century, did not appear in print referring to the Tombstone cemetery until the mid-1920s, when Walter Noble Burns's 1927 book Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest popularized the term. The graveyard was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as a contributing site to the Tombstone Historic District.
Sources
The cemetery's reputation as paranormally active developed gradually through the 20th century, paralleling Tombstone's emergence as a Western-heritage tourist destination. The most frequently reported phenomenon is photographic — visitors describing figures in 19th-century clothing appearing in images taken at the cemetery and absent from the scene as observed. The accounts are consistent enough across decades and visitors that they have been collected by the cemetery's gift shop and local paranormal investigators.
The Clanton-McLaury joint grave, marking the three men killed at the O.K. Corral, draws the densest concentration of reports. Visitors describe cold spots concentrated near the marker, the smell of tobacco smoke or gunpowder in still air, and the sense of being watched while standing at the foot of the grave. The cemetery's western section, holding unmarked graves and the burials of several known hanging victims including the men hanged after the 1884 Bisbee Massacre, generates a smaller but persistent set of reports of disembodied voices and the sound of horses where no horses are stabled.
Independent paranormal investigation at the site is limited compared to the Bird Cage Theatre a few blocks south. Most accounts circulate through ghost-tour operators, the Tombstone Chamber of Commerce, and visitor photo submissions. The cemetery's open desert setting, lack of structure to confine acoustic anomalies, and high tourist traffic complicate evidence collection. The Chamber maintains the position that the reports are part of the cemetery's living folk tradition rather than confirmed phenomena.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk among approximately 250 wooden grave markers identifying miners, lawmen, outlaws, and immigrants buried between 1879 and 1884. Locate the graves of Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury — the three men killed at the 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. A printed guide and posted markers identify notable burials.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Boothill Graveyard is Tombstone's first city cemetery, founded in 1878 to receive the dead of the booming silver-mining town. Between 1879 and 1884, about 300 people were buried here, including roughly forty percent who died violently or suddenly. Notable interments include three men killed in the 1881 O.K. Corral gunfight. The cemetery fell into disuse, was nearly lost as a dump, and was restored by the city beginning in the 1940s.