Boot Hill and Ogallala developed out of the Platte River corridor’s long history of travel, trade, migration, ranching, and railroading, from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 through exploration, overland migration, Pony Express stations, Union Pacific construction, and the rise of Ogallala as a cattle-shipping center after 1874. During the great Texas cattle-drive era of 1875 to 1885, Ogallala became a booming and often violent cowtown where cattle were driven across the South Platte into Union Pacific pens for shipment east or to western ranches, and Boot Hill became the burial ground for many cowboys, settlers, drifters, and others, including victims of shootings, illness, childbirth, accidents, and possible Indian raids. The site is associated with confirmed, probable, and possible burials from 1867 to 1885, including Robert Webster, Joseph Hayes, William Campbell, Sarah Miller and her infant child, William Shook, Henry Parker, Patrick Carroll, Michael Kearney, Rattlesnake Ed Worley, Tamer Irwin, Daniel Irwin, and others both named and unknown. Ogallala gained a reputation as a rough-and-tumble town, with seventeen recorded violent deaths between 1875 and 1885 despite a permanent population of about 100, and most of those buried here were placed in shallow graves in canvas sacks and marked with wooden headboards. By 1913 most bodies had been removed to other cemeteries, though the unknown or unclaimed remained, and later discoveries, including four graves uncovered in 1978 and reburied in 1992 along with three prehistoric Native Americans found near Lake McConaughy, showed that Boot Hill’s legacy continued into the modern era as Ogallala also came to be recognized for its cowboy heritage.