Editing Boot Hill (section)

== Origin of term ==
Although many towns use the name "Boot Hill", the first graveyard named "Boot Hill" was at [[Hays, Kansas]], five years before the founding of [[Dodge City, Kansas]].<ref name="Haysusa.net">{{cite news |title = Boot Hill Cemetery |url = http://www.haysusa.net/index.aspx?nid=191 |access-date = July 1, 2014 |newspaper = The Milwaukee Journal |date = January 10, 1939}}</ref> The meaning of why cemeteries were called "Boot Hills" has been lost, but there are three plausible reasons.

The first possible meaning of the term is based on poverty and alludes to the fact that many of the cemeteries' occupants were vagrants, or the impoverished. The concept is that those buried within either owned boots in such disrepair that no one salvaged the footwear, thus the footwear was left on the bodies at burial; or that the deceased owned no nicer formal clothing to place upon their bodies, which resulted in being interred wearing whatever clothing, and boots, they did possess.

The second concept is fairly similar - that those buried within (having been hermits, passers-through, or vagrants) had no family to contact to claim the deceased's valuables, which would include footwear.

Both of these concepts–one of poverty and worthless unsalvageable boots, the other of no next-of-kin to transfer ownership of valuables to–rely on the fact that during the 1800s, [https://www.wardrobeshop.com/blogs/vintage-style-fashion/shoe-history footwear had become expensive] commodities. This is because a shift in shoes occurred in the 19th century. While all clothing could be made by people in the 1800s with moderate sewing skills, and doing so was quite common in the western frontier of the U.S., making shoes and boots had become a craft of [[Shoemaking|cordwainers]] that required the expensive technical skills and specialized tools of the shoe makers. Prior to this era, everyday wear shoes and boots were frequently made from materials, and in limited pattern sizes, that could be easily made at home, then buckled and laced-up to create a formed fit for various sized feet. A switch was made from pliable materials to stiff form-keeping leathers, allowing for footwear that was no longer ambidextrous, but tailored to each foot's specific shape, as well as individual length and width. This required further craftsmanship and work to create specifically bespoke footwear. Thus, the increased cost of Victorian footwear makes either of these two theories the most plausible.

The third concept is likely a romanticized one. This postulates that the occupants of Boot Hills were cowboys who "died with their boots on", the implication here being they died violently, as in gunfights or by hanging, and not of natural causes. This idea is the most commonly cited on [https://tombstonechamber.com/directory/boothill-graveyard/ tourist websites]. In addition to this claim having numerous problems in the logic used to support it (i.e., significant numbers of people die while wearing footwear, for all kinds of reasons), there is no evidence to suggest that gunfights and hangings were so ubiquitous that entire cemeteries all across the western U.S. needed to be devoted to these types of violent unnatural deaths.

Despite the mystery of the term today, Boot Hill became a commonplace term for the neglected old municipal cemeteries throughout the U.S. West during the late 1800s and into the early 1900s as, more and more, families of means re-interred their deceased loved ones to the more elegant and exclusive grounds of the newer for-profit cemeteries. However, some Boot Hills became famous, such as the original in Dodge City, Kansas, or the Boot Hill in [[Tombstone, Arizona]], because of three men involved in the so-called [[Gunfight at the O.K. Corral|O.K. Corral]] shootout still being buried there.