What did Old West towns do with the carcasses of dead horses?
Bill Rogers
Columbia, South Carolina
Ordinarily if a horse died in town or near the ranch house, folks would drag the carcass to what would be euphemistically called a “boot hill for horses,” except they didn’t bury the horse. The scavengers would take care of the remains. As heartless as that might sound, a horse weighed close to a half-ton and would be hard to handle. Even if they had dug a huge grave for the horse, scavengers would have dug up the remains anyway.
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Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian and the Wild West History Association’s vice president. His latest book is 2018’s Arizona Oddities: A Land of Anomalies and Tamales. Send your question, with your city/state of residence, to marshall.trimble@scottsdalecc.edu or Ask the Marshall, P.O. Box 8008, Cave Creek, AZ 85327.