Boot Hill Cemetery - Hays, Kansas

Boot Hill Cemetery

Fort Street & West 18th Street
Hays, Kansas 67601
(785) 628-8202

Sunrise to sunset
free

Boot Hill Cemetery - Hays, Kansas

Hays, Kansas may be the home of the first Boot Hill Cemetery, where gunfighters, or those who "died with their boots on" were buried. In 1867 the hill was a half mile north of the newly founded Hays City and it was used for the earliest burials. This was five years before the founding of Dodge City and four years before the first burials in that Boot Hill.

The exact number of burials at Boot Hill is unknown, but estimates run from about 100 to less than half of that number. The last recorded burial was in 1874, the year that Mount Allen Cemetery opened.

As the city grew and surrounded the cemetery, many of the remains were moved 1/2 mile northwest to Mount Allen Cemetery, but records are incomplete and the exact number and locations of the remaining graves is largely unknown. It is believed that about half of the burials remain, but the only marker is a statue titled "The Homesteader" by local artist Pete Felten.

Boot Hill statue by Pete Felten
"The Homesteader" by Pete Felten (1972)

You Now Stand on the Original Boot Hill
Between 1868 and 1874 more than eighty persons were buried here.
Dozens of the had died "with their boots on" as victims of knife,
gun, or rope. Since the days when Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill
and Calamity Jane lived in Hays City, the bodies of sheriffs,
state representatives, and other slain citizens have rested here
alongside those of murders, horsethieves, and loose women.
Sheriff Hickok himself sent Bill Mulvey and Sam Strawhim to this
hill in 1869. Others buried here include
Hon. J. V. Macintosh    Hon. John F. Wrightt   Postmaster Jim Hare    George Clinton
Pony Donovan    Cornelius Doyle    Ed Estes    D. W. Gann    Jim Gannam
G. Gunn   Charlie Harris    Jim Hayes    Jack Hill    Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe N. Weiss
Sheriff Tom Gannon    Sheriff Pete Lanahan    Ed Hoge    Bob Louden
Billy Mark    Jack McGee    Bob McGrady    John Robinson    Mike Ryan
Miss Lou Sherwood    Jessie Macintosh
About half the bodies still lie here. The others have been
moved to Mt. Allen Cemetery

Boot Hill field
Looking up Boot Hill from the intersection of Fort Street and 18th Street

Boot Hill Cemetery Map - Hays, Kansas
Boot Hill Cemetery Map

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