Boothill Graveyard

Boothill Graveyard is Tombstone's first city cemetery, founded in 1878 to receive the dead of the booming southern Arizona silver-mining town. The name 'Boot Hill' came later, popularized in the 1920s by Hollywood Westerns and dime novels; the original cemetery was known simply as the Tombstone City Cemetery.

Between 1879 and 1884, approximately 300 burials were recorded, including the segregated Chinese and Jewish sections in the cemetery's northeast corner. Approximately 121 of those interred — roughly forty percent — died of causes other than old age, with gunshot wounds the leading cause of premature death in early Tombstone. After Tombstone opened a new city cemetery, Boothill stopped accepting burials around 1883 and fell into disrepair.

The most famous Boothill interments are Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury — three men killed in the October 26, 1881 gunfight near the O.K. Corral. By the 1940s the cemetery had nearly become a garbage dump; wooden grave markers had disintegrated, and many had been stolen as souvenirs or trampled by free-range cattle. The City of Tombstone began restoration in the 1940s, replacing markers and rehabilitating the grounds for tourism.

Researchers note that some current markers are believed to be in approximately correct locations rather than verified exact placements, and that some marker text appears to have been embellished for visitor interest. Even so, the cemetery is a primary Western-history destination and a National Register-eligible historic resource.