Why did the American West name its pauper graveyards after footwear?

History · Published 20 October 2026 · Updated 21 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The term Boot Hill is synonymous with the lawless American frontier, but its origins remain a mystery. While popular culture links the name to cowboys dying violently in their boots, historians suggest a more mundane, economic reality: these were final resting places for the impoverished who owned little else of value.

The most plausible theories for the name center on the extreme poverty of those interred in these municipal cemeteries. During the 19th century, footwear became an expensive commodity due to a shift in manufacturing. As cordwainers replaced home-sewn footwear with bespoke, stiff-leather boots tailored to individual feet, a pair of boots became a significant asset. Vagrants and transients buried in these plots often lacked family to claim their belongings, or their boots were so worn that they were deemed worthless to salvage, leading to the deceased being buried in whatever they wore.

The romanticized notion that Boot Hill was reserved for gunfighters who 'died with their boots on' is widely cited on tourist sites but lacks historical evidence. There is no indication that violent deaths were frequent enough to necessitate dedicated cemeteries across the West. Instead, the term became a generic label for neglected burial grounds as families of means moved their loved ones to newer, for-profit cemeteries in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Famous sites like the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona, highlight the reality of these spaces. Believed to hold over 300 people, the site features the graves of Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers from the O.K. Corral shootout. Yet, the cemetery also contains many unrecorded burials, including those of Chinese and Jewish immigrants. Much of the site's history was lost to neglect and the theft of wooden grave markers as souvenirs, a phenomenon so severe that former Mayor John Clum could not locate his own wife's grave during a 1929 visit.

Today, the name persists in popular culture, from the Gunsmoke radio series to modern video games and music. Whether it originated from the economic status of the deceased or a tongue-in-cheek reference to Scottish coronation traditions, the name has evolved from a marker of social neglect into a staple of Western mythology.

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