'Boot Hill' still in service

BARD - Cemeteries named Boot Hill conjure up an indelible image of the Old West, where gun-toting cowboys too slow on the draw wound up buried "with their boots on," hence their name.

Quay County contained not just one, but two, cemeteries actually called Boot Hill. The one that existed just outside of Tucumcari appears to be long gone, but another one a few miles south of Bard on private ranchland remains in use, with at least two people interred there in recent decades.

Wikipedia lists about 40 Boot Hill cemeteries in the United States, including as far east as Iowa and Michigan. The closest to Quay County's in New Mexico is Alma's, in the southwest.

The first Boot Hill reportedly was in Hays, Kansas, and the most famous probably is Tombstone, Arizona's. Not all Boot Hills came with a reputation of being lined with gunfight casualties. The one in Iowa, for example, was created for a nearby prison. Others existed as potter's fields for the indigent or for mass graves during epidemics.

Boot Hill Cemetery south of Bard remains well known enough to be listed on maps by Google and the U.S. Geological Survey. It also was briefly mentioned in the book "Quay County 1903-1985."

The graveyard sits on a hill a few hundred feet east of Quay Road M behind a fence and locked gate at Riley Camp, also known as Davidson Ranch.

Don McCoy, who's worked as a ranch hand there for almost 40 years, provided access to Boot Hill on a chilly Friday morning.

The cemetery, surrounded by barbed wire and a metal gate, measures only about 75 by 45 feet. Walls of stacked stone surround three apparent graves, and one wall has collapsed. Stones also were laid on several other graves. A cow's skull sat just inside the entrance. A crow and the distant hum of Interstate 40 traffic could be heard, but little else.

The cemetery's gate once contained a sign above it that has long disappeared.

"It's been called Boot Hill for as long as I remember," McCoy said.

Only two graves are marked. One is a white gravestone for Isaac M. Greear, listed as born in Grayson County, Virginia, who died at age 66 in 1905.

The other is small metal marker for an infant boy who died in 1997. McCoy said the baby was the cousin of the landowner, and ranch hands dug a hole for the burial using posthole diggers.

McCoy said an "old cowboy" named Pete Squire who worked in the area also was buried there about 25 years ago. He said Squire was getting up in age and hadn't acquired a burial plot. The ranch's foreman assured him he could be interred at Boot Hill, and Squire died about a year later. His resting place remains unmarked.

Like Squire's, most graves have no markings at Boot Hill. McCoy said one reason was several headstones were stolen decades ago. Uncarved stones mark many graves instead. Little information exists on who else is buried there.

Noting the cemetery's proximity to the Mackenzie Trail and Llano Spring, McCoy surmised an Army field hospital for cavalry troops was there in the late 1800s. He cited a 1990 edition of "The Roads of New Mexico" atlas as supporting his case, as a cross marking indicates a hospital at that location. However, several other sites where cemeteries are known to exist in Quay County also are marked as hospitals in the atlas, leading one to believe the publication erred. No other historical references about a military field hospital in the area have been found.

A second Boot Hill Cemetery sat northeast of Tucumcari where a farm field is now, said Duane Moore, a longtime researcher of Quay County cemeteries who's presented his work to the Tucumcari Historical Museum.

Moore has spent years uploading local cemetery data to genealogical websites such as Findagrave.com. Tucumcari's Boot Hill also is shown on at least one old map on display at the museum. He said Boot Hill lies about a mile north of the current-day Tucumcari Memorial Park cemetery.

Decades ago, Moore said he'd heard several people conversing about the cemetery, saying the few tombstones remaining at Boot Hill were removed during construction of an irrigation canal during the 1940s. Moore declined to identify the people who might have been involved in their removal.

"I heard they dug a deep trench, then the headstones were pushed into it," he said.

Franklin McCasland, manager of the Arch Hurley Conservancy District, said he was unaware of a removal of a cemetery during canal construction.

"I've never heard a word about this," he said. "I've have people who've worked here for decades who never mentioned it."

McCasland said during construction of the canals, contractors avoided Native American petroglyphs in the area because of their historical significance.

"I can't imagine them going through a cemetery and doing that on purpose," he said.

Moore said the graveyard dated to a time in the early 20th century when Tucumcari was a violent town that earned one of its names of Six Shooter Siding.

"There were so many people getting killed," he said. "It was cowboys shooting other cowboys. When somebody got killed, they took them out there and buried them."

Moore said many graves at Tucumcari's Boot Hill probably were unmarked. Nor was its layout particularly organized.

"A lot of them, they probably didn't know their names because they'd just drifted into town," he said. "They just took them out there, found a spot and dug a hole. They didn't line them up side by side."