The first full day of our late spring / early summer trip to Colorado and Utah started out with just one real agenda item: drive from Denver all the way over and through the Rocky Mountains and down on to the high desert of the Colorado Plateau to Moab, Utah. Goodbye mountains. Hello desert!
The drive from Denver to Moab runs about five and a half hours straight out west on Interstate 70 across gorgeous scenery and through an incredible canyon before dulling out a little and hanging a left down the last 30 miles on US-191 once we got into Utah. It's certainly not the longest drive I've taken in one day either alone or with others but on this trip we figured we'd need a spot to stop for lunch and break up the drive a bit. So we searched for something to see along the way. Plus it was Saturday. I didn't want to just spend all day Saturday in a car and see absolutely nothing of this great country of ours while I was on vacation.
What to do?
A half hour or so of research on the trusty world wide web turned up a number of options in Colorado. Large trout made out of car license plates in Palisade, maybe? How about a bison sculpted from car bumpers in Grand Junction? Tempting, believe me. Especially the bison. But ultimately, we opted for a little history in Glenwood Springs. And I do really mean a LITTLE history. But we'll get to that. What's in Glenwood Springs, you might ask? Well, it's the last and final resting place of a former dentist from Atlanta named John Henry Holliday.
Although you might know him better as Doc.
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| Annie's Wishing Tree along Pioneer Cemetery Trail. |
Doc Holliday's name is most often associated with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, perhaps the most famous gunfight in all of the American west. The 30 second (not kidding) event took place on October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona and pitted legendary lawman Wyatt Earp and his brothers, along with Holliday, against a gang of outlaws known as The Cowboys. The Earps and Holliday won the gunfight I guess, killing three of The Cowboys against zero casualties for their own side. But the feud that erupted that day eventually led to more killings over the next six months which led to more deaths on both side in addition to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Holliday by the Justice of the Peace in Tucson.
Now, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear the name Doc Holliday is Val Kilmer in the 1993 movie Tombstone coughing and sweating and dropping one liners like "I'm your huckleberry!" to goad Michael Biehn's character Johnny Ringo into a fight. I know you are thinking that too. I just know you are. It's OK. There's no shame in admitting it. That's who or what we were chasing that Saturday last month.
I have to confess (and I'm embarrassed because I feel I'm a fan of the old west) that before...oh let's say early June of this year I didn't really know a whole lot about Holliday. I certainly didn't know he was a dentist. But he was. The quick version of his first 21 or so years is born and raised in Georgia, school at the University of Pennsylvania, moved to St. Louis to practice dentistry and then moved to Atlanta shortly thereafter to do the same. He also contracted tuberculosis at age 15, which is why Val Kilmer is coughing and sweating in Tombstone.
It appears Holliday moved out west (first to Texas then to town after town after town all over the place) to get to some cleaner air that might cure his tuberculosis. It didn't, for the simple reason that tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that cannot be cured simply with fresh air, not that they knew that then. Once out west, Holliday gave up dentistry in favor of gambling and drinking and along the way saved Wyatt Earp's life in a gunfight which started a years long friendship which ultimately led to that O.K. Corral gunfight and beyond. For the record, neither gambling nor drinking are proven cures for tuberculosis either.
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| Doc Holliday's grave. Maybe. Actually...probably not. |
After the O.K. Corral and the subsequent skirmishes and the arrest warrant thing, Doc ended up on the run. He managed to find some measure of safety in Colorado due to Wyatt Earp getting the governor of that state to refuse Doc's extradition to Arizona. The exact place he ended up was Glenwood Springs, where he thought he might as well take a shot at the hot springs there curing the tuberculosis.
It didn't. Because just like fresh air, gambling and drinking, hot springs don't cure bacterial infections either.
According to the signage scattered around Glenwood Springs, Doc arrived in town in May of 1887 and he lasted until November 8 of that year before he passed away. He died at the Hotel Glenwood (which no longer exists) after spending several weeks in a coma. Not the way you picture wild west heroes dying, I know. After his death, he was buried in Linwood Cemetery, which was established coincidentally the very month Doc died. That was our destination that Saturday afternoon. Nine years ago, I visited the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Seth Bullock in Deadwood, South Dakota. Time to add a third western legend to my graves visited list.
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| Doc Holliday's memorial, Linwood Cemetery, Glenwood Springs, Colorado. |
The grave with Doc Holliday's name is about as far down the slope as you can walk on the right hand side of the property as you walk down the hill. It's a fenced off area behind a simple metal barrier with a white marble marker bearing Doc's name and his date of birth and death (August 14, 1851 to November 8, 1887 or just 36 years old!). However, it's unlikely Doc is buried in that spot.
For all his friends in high places and his notoriety, John Henry Holliday probably died destitute and penniless and likely could not afford anything like the marker that stands honoring his name today in Linwood Cemetery. The old west had a lot of folks in similar circumstances but the towns nonetheless took care of getting them buried. I mean, what else are they supposed to do with the corpses?
The mostly likely spot for Doc's actual burial site (again according to the signage in town) was Potter's Field, a plot of land reserved for the community's poorer residents and visitors and perhaps those folks seen as less desirable by society back then. Think prostitutes, minorities and suicides here to name a few.
Nobody really knows where Doc Holliday is actually buried but I guess enough people feel he's somewhere in Linwood Cemetery to make a tourist attraction and local legend out of it. The town, to its credit, is pretty forthcoming about this. There's a marker in front of what appears to be Doc's grave with the inscription "This memorial dedicated to Doc Holliday who is buried somewhere in this cemetery".
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| At least they are honest about it... |
We did attempt to find the former site of the Hotel Glenwood. We found a website that put the Hotel on a site currently occupied by the Summit Canyon Mountaineering store. We found this store easily enough (and even picked up a new water bottle) but it appears the store may have moved since the information was published on the website we visited. If we had visited the store instead at its former address (which is 732 Grand Avenue), we'd have been way better off. Disappointed we got this one wrong but I'm not sure getting it right would have significantly enhanced our experience. Doc's sort of grave was good enough. Besides, the real destination this day was Moab, Utah. No regrets!
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| Summit Canyon Mountaineering. Cool store but not where Doc Holliday died. |
How We Did It
The Doc Holliday's Grave Trailhead is the start of the half mile hike (sometimes known as the Pioneer Cemetery Trail) up to about where Doc is buried. The Trailhead is located at 1204 Bennett Avenue in Glenwood Springs. The signs at that spot advertise the walk as "moderately strenuous". It's steep in places and is mostly exposed to the sun which makes the walk in the middle of the day a little difficult. Take it slowly and bring water. There's plenty of parking on the street near the trail entrance. Once you get to Linwood Cemetery there is enough signage for you to get around but finding the memorial takes a little looking. Keep going downhill and to the right.
About halfway up the hill on the hike, you'll come to a tree with all sorts of ribbons and beer cans and soda bottles and scraps of paper with wishes and all manner of other stuff tied to it. Local resident Annie Zancanella started tying stuff to the tree while undergoing cancer treatment and a tradition evolved from there. Appropriately enough, she works in dentistry.
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