In October of 1872, the newly established frontier village of Bismarck experienced its first death. Private Sharpe was buried by his comrades, receiving the first burial in Bismarck. A month later, Mrs. McDonald gave birth to the first baby in North Dakota’s future capital city, but the baby passed away soon after.

The pioneers of Bismarck reluctantly realized that burial grounds were needed in the community. They established Bismarck’s first cemetery on the present day Capitol grounds, where the Governor’s mansion and Fourth Street now lay. However, this graveyard was never viewed as permanent, and so Bismarck’s first cemetery was never properly named.

It is now referred to as Fourth Street Cemetery or Boot Hill Cemetery, due mainly to early Bismarck’s wild west image. Boot Hill was a common name in the 19th century American West for burial grounds used by those who “died with their boots on,” or in violent acts. The term was also used to describe a pauper’s cemetery, which are graves set aside for those who could not afford burials.

Burials continued at Boot Hill until 1877 when the Catholic Church of Bismarck purchased about 46 acres of land to be used as a final resting place for Bismarck’s citizens. Burial lots in St. Mary’s Cemetery were 16x16 feet, and could be purchased for $20 or a single grave for $5.

In 1880 a group of Bismarck Protestants followed suit and purchased land for a cemetery they called Fairview. Bismarck was suddenly home to two permanent and officially named cemeteries, making the Fourth Street graveyard obsolete and an obstruction to the growth of Bismarck. The cemetery that once lay on the outskirts of a small frontier village was suddenly in the middle of a growing city.

It was decided that those buried in Boot Hill Cemetery should be moved to either the St. Mary’s or Fairview Cemeteries, and in the early 1880's men went to work exhuming more than fifty bodies.

The city of Bismarck called for citizens to “take care of their dead,” warning residents to remember their friends or family buried at Boot Hill and to remove and re-bury the remains of their dearly departed.

It was thought that every grave at the Fourth Street cemetery had been empty, but on this date in 1903 the Bismarck Tribune reported a horrifying tale: while excavating fourth street for a trolley line that would run to the capitol, workers made the gruesome discovery of thirteen bodies on the abandoned site of Boot Hill.

Dozens of Bismarck’s earliest settlers had been buried in the Capital city’s first cemetery, and not all of them died with their boots on, contrary to the graveyard’s popular nickname. Of course there were a few Bismarck men who were buried with their boots on, among them was Dave Mullen.

To learn more about Dave Mullen’s daring encounter with the Seventh Calvary and how he found himself in Boot Hill Cemetery, tune in to tomorrow’s Dakota Datebook.

By Ann Erling

Sources:
“Burleigh County Book of Remembrances.” Bauman, Gorden, Jackman.
Bismarck Tribune, Oct. 9, 1903.

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