Boot Hill

We got up early this morning, ON A SATURDAY, and headed to Dodge City. A visit to Boot Hill has been on our summer to do list and, well, our summer is almost over.  Danny has lived here for over 20 years and had never visited and I hadn't been for about that long.   We..Danny and I ...have a fascination with the "old days" so we were really looking forward to this!

The boys thought the jail had a "creepy" feel to it.

Taken from the Boot Hill website:
Boot Hill Museum was built on the original location of the infamous Boot Hill Cemetery. From 1872 to 1878 Dodge City had no established cemetery of its own. It became known as Boot Hill due to the fact that most of the people buried here still had boots on their feet.
Most of the bodies were believed to have been moved during Dodge City’s early expansion. There is a large corner, left undisturbed, where you are able to walk among the markers that tell the stories of the many souls who were buried on top of the hill. The cemetery only existed as a burial ground for about six years; it was a lookout point, used to view the river’s lowlands, a place to observe wild game and buffalo and to detect one’s enemies.

My guys REALLY enjoyed the different guns they had on exhibit

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And we had the BEST time in the Longbranch Saloon where we "bellied up to the bar" and drank some ice cold Sarsaparillas.

 

See that beautiful bar behind Tristen? It was made out of cherry wood in 1881.

This man playing the piano was adorable and could play the piano like no one I've ever seen!

This was taken from the Hardesty House.  I didn't take a lot of pictures in here, but I was memorized by the stairs. They were stunning! You can no longer go up to the second floor. The house was built in 1879 and the information says when it was built it was not built so to handle the 90,000+ visitors the home gets per year and there had been some structural damage to it.  Later when I researched a little about the house, I found many stories on the internet about this house being haunted.  I'm glad I found this out AFTER we had visited.

This exhibit was of old barb wire. You wouldn't think that would be very interesting, but some of these were amazing works of art.

I loved all the old brands. Somewhere in there is a cute little heart one.

There were many other exhibits I was unable to get pictures of due to the lighting. A bank, a medical exhibit, clothing store, blacksmith, printing press, and a mortuary.  Some of the caskets had glass windows in them. And of course, we had to see the train that sits out by the parking lot.

It was a great and fun morning! We really enjoyed our visit. Sometimes I think it would be amazing to go back to live in such a simpler time, but yet realize how lucky I am to live in this day and age!