Boot Hill

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, footwear had become expensive commodities.

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.

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.

It was used after that only to bury a few later outlaws (some legally hanged and one shot in a robbery), as well as a few colorful Western characters and one man (Emmett Crook Nunnally) who had spent many volunteer hours restoring it.

In the first season of the Gunsmoke television series, the introduction to each episode showed Matt Dillon walking around Boot Hill reflecting on the deaths of men buried there.

Boot Hill cemetery is a main plot point in the Twilight Zone episode Mr. Garrity and the Graves.

Boot Hill also appears in the first-person shooter video game Borderlands 2, located in 'The Dust', and playing home to a 'truxican standoff'.

[8] The first of three parts that compose the Neil Young song "Country Girl", that appears in his 1970 album with Crosby, Stills & Nash, "Déjà Vu", is called "Whiskey Boot Hill".

Several themes from Bob Dylan's soundtrack album "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid" (1973) contain the verse "Up to Boot Hill they'd like to send ya".

"Boot Hill" (unknown) is the first track on Stevie Ray Vaughan's 1991 posthumous release The Sky is Crying.

In the comic book series Preacher, the Saint of Killers rests at a tomb on Boot Hill when not actively pursuing his goals.

In season 5 episode 16 of the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, "Pest of the West", the character Spongebuck is told the old sheriff of Dead-Eye Gulch is at Boot Hill.