I’m Your Huckleberry

This is an odd one for me, and I’m not sure if it was Google Maps or AllTrails that I was scrolling around looking for places to check out and randomly the trail for Doc Holliday’s Grave Trail popped up. It is located in Glenwood Springs, right off of I70, which I was driving along and needed a place to stop for a break anyway, so I figured what the heck. I really like the movie Tombstone, and so I thought it might be cool to make it a bit more real and visit Doc’s grave.

I expected the graveyard to be full of “olde timey” graves that dated back to that era, and while there were a few, the majority were more recent (the newest one I noticed was 1983 I think but most were early 1900s at least). I also expected it to be completely vacant, but it was surprisingly popular trail and there were plenty of people climbing up the hill to visit the graveyard.

But then I noticed this…

Apparently when Doc died he was poor and only had a wooden marker on his grave (if any) which obviously has long since deteriorated. Add to that the fact that at some point the records were either lost, stolen, or otherwise destroyed from the Glenwood Springs records department, so all knowledge of where Doc is actually buried is a mystery.

There is what is called a “Potter’s Field” next to Linwood Cemetery where this marker is, and there are some that speculate that since Doc was poor when he died, he may have even been buried there in an unmarked grave as was the custom for the poor, criminals, and other unwanted members of society who died with no one to bury them.

Regardless, it was still a cool little visit… even if the town of Glenwood Springs does a bit of bait-and-switch to get folks to visit the graveyard… (and it isn’t like they down play it at all, it is quite prominent)