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Doc Holliday’s Grave in Linwood Cemetery
Glenwood Springs, CO – Memorial
Doc Holliday, famed dentist, gambler, and gunman is buried in Linwood Cemetery. John Henry “Doc” Holliday was born August 14, 1851 and died November 8, 1887. A stone at the site reads, “This memorial dedicated to Doc Holliday who is buried someplace in this cemetery.” This is a memorial in Glenwood Springs, CO.
News about Doc Holliday’s Grave can be found at:
Loveland Reporter-Herald (February 4, 2017) – Doc Holliday buried at Glenwood Springs
Post Independent (December 13, 2015) – Is this Doc Holliday? Was he dead?
More information about Doc Holliday can be found at:
Wikipedia – Doc Holliday
John Henry Holliday was born August 14, 1851 to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane McKey Holliday in Griffin, Georgia. The family moved to Lowndes County in 1864, about seven miles north of Valdosta, Georgia. John Henry was educated at the Valdosta Institute and later graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Holliday is probably best known for his involvement with Wyatt Earp and his brothers in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881.
His Glenwood Days
“Doc” Holliday came to Glenwood Springs near the end of his life in May of 1887. He was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis and presumably came to take the mineral waters and vapors of the hot springs. On November 8, 1887, after several weeks in a coma, Holliday died in his room at the Hotel Glenwood, which once stood on the corner of 8th Street and Grand Avenue. Legend states that his last words were “This is funny,” possibly referring to the face that he died in bed instead of being cut down by another gunman’s bullet. A eulogy was delivered by Reverend W.S. Rudolph of the Presbyterian Church and Holliday was buried in Linwood Cemetery.
Where Is He?
Most visits to Glenwood’s oldest cemetery include viewing the monument for Dr. John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. The exact location of Holliday’s grave is unknown. At the time of his death in 1887, Linwood Cemetery, also known as Pioneer or Glenwood Cemetery, was privately owned. It was purchases by the City of Glenwood Springs in 1939. At some point in time, the cemetery records were lost, stolen, misplaced or destroyed, and along with them, any record of where “Doc” was actually buried.
“Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.” -Wyatt Earp
Doc’s Monument
In the 1950’s, books and movies were released on the life of Holliday, renewing interest in the life of the dentist turned gunslinger. The Glenwood Springs Chamber of Commerce knew that “Doc’s” grave could serve as a drawing card for tourists to our community, so the city erected a monument near the flagpole in Linwood Cemetery. The original monument contained erroneous information and was replaced in 2004.”
