Last Digs for Doc Holliday

"Isn't it strange how we remember much of the sinners and so little of the saints." -- Pinkerton detective Lowell Spence in 1949 said about Kid Curry's death in 1903. From the book The Wild Bunch (copyright 1958) by James D. Horan.

One of the things to do in Glenwood Springs was to visit Doc Holliday's grave. After Tombstone and moving around Colorado, Doc Holliday came to Glenwood Springs in 1887 for the waters in hopes to cure him of tuberculosis. That is where he died and was buried at Linwood Cemetery.

Without Doc Holliday's biographers and western mythological fiction, the Linwood Cemetery would be grown over with grass and shrub. There would be few visitors 100 years later. However, tourism is business. The city constructed hiking trail skirts the top of a nearby mountain where the cemetery commands a beautiful view of the valley.

Considering my long time fascination with the western cowboy myth, I had to make the pilgrimage to Holliday's grave. It was a warm day for a hike on the well worn trail with strategically placed signs pointing to the direction of the city installed Doc Holliday memorial stone.

Further cemetery and Doc Holliday history appears on city erected markers. These signs provide an abbreviated version of the detail that can be found in a Wikipedia entry for Doc Holliday.

I've always wonder why many western Rocky Mountain cemeteries are atop a rocky hill over looking the town below. Today this would be prime residential real estate for the views. Why a cemetery up here. Not easy to get to and excavating a hole in the rock strewn surface must have been a real chore for the grave diggers.

The grave site of the "sinner" is the draw to this mountain top. Checking out a few of the other memorials in the cemetery, I looked for memorials for the graves of business leaders or founders of Glenwood Springs 100 years ago. Nothing to be found.