Billy the Kid Killed Here
Fort Sumner, New Mexico
If you believe that Billy the Kid was killed by sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881 -- and not everyone does -- then this is a place you'll want to see. Back in 1881 it was a first floor bedroom in the sprawling house of Pete Maxwell, a friend of Billy's. Now it's just an empty, stony lot, marked with a small, engraved granite slab, flat on the ground.
Garrett shot Billy in the bedroom under circumstances variously described as self-defense or a cowardly ambush, depending on whom you believe. The day after the shooting, Billy's corpse was carried a couple hundred yards east and buried in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery, next to two of the Kid's former outlaw gang members, who'd been killed only a few months earlier.
The death site marker is routinely festooned with visitor offerings of pebbles and spare change, and an occasional cigarette and bullet.