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Longtime friend and famous lawman Wyatt Earp had this to say about John Henry "Doc" Holliday:
"Doc was a dentist not a lawman or an assassin, whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun that I ever knew."
Earp's quote encompasses Holliday so well that little remains to be said, except that one of history's greatest Western characters also played a pivotal role during the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Eventually he died of tuberculosis at the Glenwood Springs sanitarium. As he laid in bed, he spoke his last words: "Well, I'll be damned. This is funny," referencing his barefoot state, for no one had anticipated Doc meeting Death in such a relaxed fashion.
Today, his headstone can be viewed in the Linwood Cemetery in which he is buried, though the exact spot of his plot remains unknown.
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Know Before You Go
Glenwood Springs is at the junction of US Interstate 70 and Colorado Route 82. The cemetery is located approximately at Bennett St and E 13th St. At 12th and Bennett, a rough but clearly marked trail can be found leading to the grave site.
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Published
February 23, 2010
