boot hill

McCurdy now lies buried on Boot Hill.

Riley watched warmups Saturday with his right foot encased in a protective walking boot; Hill did not appear to be at the game.

Boot Hill, which once held the graves of early settlers and cowboys who met unfortunate ends, sits north of downtown.

Now, thanks to technology and a 77-year-old miner’s keen memory, a team of researchers believes it has found Taft’s long-forgotten “Boot Hill,” shedding new light on the story of one of the West’s last frontier towns.

Fifty-one bodies had been unearthed by the time Whitehead’s novel was published, more are probably yet to be found, and the final count will not provide finality about how many were dumped in what the boys called Boot Hill.