Front St. and Main St. (respectively), Fairplay

Fairplay’s two most famous graves are the final resting places for two very different burros: Prunes, a hardworking miner’s helper who lived more than 60 years, and Shorty, who was said to be lazier than Prunes, but beloved by Fairplayers nonetheless. What about the third most famous grave in town? That would be Bum, a dog who was Shorty’s best friend.

Dennis Weaver Memorial Park, on the Uncompahgre River, north of Ridgway (from U.S. 550, head west at the yellow mailbox)

The actor best known as the TV cop on McCloud and the TV cowboy sidekick on Gunsmoke was perhaps more famous later in life for his environmentalism and humaitarian activities than his acting. Sunridge, his 10,000-square-foot former home outside of Ridgway, is the most celebrated earthship on the planet, made largely with recycled materials—tires, aluminum cans—in its energy-efficient design. Weaver spoke out against our “addiction to fossil fuels,” for industrial hemp, and started a number of successful nonprofits to boot.  

Old Hill Cemetery, accessible via trail , Glenwood Springs

After earning his D.D.S. from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, John Henry Holliday went into practice and promptly contracted tuberculosis. Doctors told him he would die within months, but might extend his life by heading to the drier climates out West. In 1873, he did just that, but his poor health forced him out of dentistry and into gambling, which he was quite good at. His new vocation required he hone his skill in gunfighting, which he also was quite good at. He hooked up with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and later survived the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, gambling, drinking, and coughing his way through the Wild West for much longer than his doctors had predicted. In 1887, after narrowly escaping death by a bullet numerous times, Holliday’s frail health deteriorated further and he headed to Glenwood Springs to try a new miracle cure: sulfur vapors. They didn’t work, and “Doc” lapsed into a two-month coma before awakening, drinking a glass of whiskey, saying, “This is funny,” and dying.

Holliday was buried at an indeterminate place in the Old Hill Cemetery (or perhaps just near it), but after his legend grew, the city erected a proper memorial.

Riverside Cemetery, 601 W. 8th Ave., Fort Morgan, Colorado

Outlived by his father, sci-fi icont Philip K. Dick was buried by him alongside his twin sister, Jane C. Dick. The prematurely born pair were separated in death by more than 50 years, as Jane lived only six weeks. Way before his time—hell, he's still before even our time—Dick wrote mind-bending sci-fi classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner on the silver screen) and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Dick mixed drugs, politics, religion, and dysfunction in his pessimistic and surreal near-futures, at once baffling and completely plausible. His final resting place—in a place he never lived, next to a sister he never knew, but always felt—is somehow appropriate.

Green Mountain Cemetery (near the back center of section K), 290 20th St., Boulder, Colorado, 303/444-5695

After his attempt at pop stardom fizzled in the U.S., musician and actor Dean Reed fostered a South American fan base, moved to Argentina, and became a leftist activist against his native country’s foreign policy. Argentina deported him in 1966, and he eventually landed in East Germany, where he emerged as the Soviet Union’s biggest musical sensation. Despite his outspoken opposition to U.S. policy—which attracted a lot of hate mail and death threats—Reed never renounced his U.S. citizenship and filed tax returns with the I.R.S. until his mysterious drowning in 1986, which some say was murder and others claim was suicide.

Littleton Cemetery, 6155 S. Prince St., Littleton, Colorado (Packer’s grave is under the tree near the second-most northern entrance.) 

Colorado’s favorite illiterate cannibal ate the other four members of his gold-rushing party from Provo, Utah. Whether he killed them or not—he claimed he only defended himself from the true killer, then ate the carnage to survive—went with him to his grave in Littleton Cemetery. After his original confession in 1874, Packer (known as both Alfred and Alferd because of his own illiteracy) spent nearly a decade on the lam before being apprehended living under an alias in Cheyenne, Wyoming. However, his second incarceration was again cut short. After a newspaper reporter convinced the governor to commute Packer’s 40-year sentence in 1901, he was paroled lived out his remaining days in the Denver foothills—understandably—as a vegetarian.