Why was John Johnson dug up in 1974 from the old soldiers home graveyard in Los Angeles, California, and reburied in Cody, Wyoming?

William Gross

Via the Internet

After the movie Jeremiah Johnson came out in 1972, John “Liver Eating” Johnson was “rediscovered” by a junior high teacher in Lancaster, California, who didn’t think the old mountain man would have appreciated being buried near the freeway. Seventh grade teacher Tri Robinson initiated a class project in 1974 to move Johnson’s bones to a tourist place called Old Trail Town on the edge of Cody. Actor Robert Redford, who played the mountain man in Jeremiah Johnson, was a pallbearer.

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Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian. His books include The Arizona Trilogy and Law of the Gun.

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