Unsolicited “clickbait” emails have this way of popping up in my Telegraph work inbox at irritating times.
They come from PR types announcing that “Nebraska is No. 8 in the nation for orange construction barrels” or “North Platte is the third-worst city in Nebraska for shoveling snow in the midst of howling blizzards.” (I made those up, so don’t write saying your home is worse.)
I usually label them “junk” and block the sender. But once in a while, one of them catches the eye of Madame Editor (my wife) or me.
Joan gets credit for seeing this one a couple of weeks ago: “3 Nebraska Cemeteries Among America’s Most Beautiful Hidden Gems.”
Ogallala’s Boot Hill, my hometown’s Texas Trail cemetery, came in at No. 51 ahead of Omaha and Lincoln sites.
OK, you got my attention! (This time.)
The sender cited a 3,007-respondent survey last month (of living customers, no doubt) by Choice Mutual, a “final expense” life insurance agency.
It’s a real enough business in Reno, Nevada, with a link to the survey on its website (choicemutual.com) listing its top 140 “hidden gem” cemeteries.
Cowboys killed on early Ogallala’s streets or in its saloons shared space with early settlers on Boot Hill, which overlooks the heart of the K…
The list isn’t clickable, but the email offers this description of Boot Hill: “A rough-hewn burial ground from the cattle-town days. Wooden markers and open prairie create a stark, authentic frontier feel far from modern Nebraska’s highways.”
That it does.
I grew up seven blocks west of where Boot Hill towers above most of the “Cowboy Capital of Nebraska” on the south edge of Ogallala’s north bluffs above the South Platte River.
Visitors park on West C or 10th streets and ascend a steep concrete staircase to reach it, or settle for reading the Nebraska historical marker if they can’t.
My hometown’s Boot Hill isn’t an invented “tourist trap,” though the Jaycees built the staircase, verified gravesites and installed replica wooden markers as Ogallala reclaimed its “End of the Texas Trail” heritage ahead of Nebraska’s 1967 centennial.
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The state marker was dedicated Aug. 9, 1964, two days after the opening of Front Street and the Crystal Palace Revue in which I would play piano three summers in the 1980s.
An iron fence-enclosed rock gravestone testifies that ordinary Ogallala pioneer folk shared Boot Hill.
But most burial sites belonged to trail hands who staked their pay on what proved to be their last stand at a gambling table — like “Rattlesnake Ed” Worley, shot in the eye by Lank Keyes in August 1884 after losing a $9 bet playing three-card monte.
That was the last year of Ogallala’s cattle-drive heyday. At least 48 people were buried on Boot Hill when Ogallala Cemetery opened in 1885, the Find a Grave website says.
Most of the bodies were moved to the new cemetery. Their original markers decayed away. Had the Jaycees not restored it and planted trees, I’m sure I never would have noticed it.
Instead, I came to cherish those weathered markers, those lovely evergreen trees and the 1965 sculpture (since replaced by a newer rendition) of Texas Trail hand and early settler Samuel “Lep” Sanders, carved by my orthodontist, the late Dr. Burdette L. Gainsforth.
And I remember the excitement in August 1978 — I was 14 — when an excavator working just north managed to dig up five bodies confirmed to be from the Texas Trail era. Boot Hill stretched farther than we thought!
Made up? Tourist trap? Not on your life. (Or their deaths.)
North Platte has a connection to the No. 1 cemetery in Choice Mutual’s survey, by the way. That’s Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, home to William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and his wife, Louisa, from 1873 to 1877. Their children Kit, Orra and Arta are buried there, along with Cody’s foster son, Johnny Baker.
I find myself wondering just how many Boot Hill visitors it took (from the recent past, that is) for my hometown’s first cemetery to rate just outside the Top 50 in any kind of national poll.
The Boot Hill farther down the trail in Dodge City, Kansas, didn’t make the list (though Keith County News clips indicate folks there advised Ogallala folks during the 1960s restoration).
But the Boot Hill in Tombstone, Arizona, home of the notorious 1881 OK Corral shootout, was ranked No. 34.
That’s good company as Wild West landmarks go.
Todd von Kampen is Telegraph special projects reporter. Email him at todd.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com.
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