Burroughs enjoyed good physical and mental health during his later years until only a few months before his death when he began to experience lapses in memory and show general signs of advanced age including declining heart function. In February 1921, Burroughs underwent an operation to remove an abscess from his chest. After this operation, his health steadily declined. Burroughs died on March 29, 1921, on a train near Kingsville, Ohio. He was buried in Roxbury, New York, on what would have been his 84th birthday, at the foot of a rock he had played on as a child and affectionately referred to as "Boyhood Rock". A line of his is etched on the rock: "I stand amid the eternal ways".