The second day of our trip to Arizona’s southeast was spent in Tombstone. Is there any other town that is so quintessentially Old West? Probably not. Of course, a good-sized chunk of the morning was spent in just
getting there. The town bills itself as “The Town Too Tough to Die.” We don’t know about all that, but you’ve
had to have been tough to get there back in the day. Tougher still to stay there. It’s in such a barren stretch of country. As the miles roll by on smaller and smaller and roads you ask yourself why anyone ever went out there at all. Like many other places in Arizona the answer is simple: mining.
And people did come. First came the soldiers to secure the area and protect potential settlers from the encroached-upon (and therefore disgruntled) Apaches. Next came the miners. One Ed Schieffelin was told that if he went to mine all he would find would be his tombstone. Thumbing his nose at his critics he named his claim “Tombstone” and the settlement that grew up around it also took that name. With the settlement came equipment suppliers, saloon keepers (there were once 120 saloons) and “ladies of negotiable affection” to take some of that silver off the miners’ hands. Last of all the hills around town filled with ranchers and cowboys. Tombstone was such a boom town that it used to be the county seat of Cochise County. Cochise was the name of the Apache leader that all these people displaced.
The former courthouse is now a state historic park and a wonderful museum. That was our first stop when we reached town. Every aspect of life in the old west is covered from mining and ranching equipment to the rules of the town’s number one game: faro, from aspects of the domestic to famous legal proceedings. It offers an excellent over-view of the town’s history, a general feeling for life in the Old West and some specific information on the famous gunfight. All day long as we wondered the many other shops we kept thinking back to the context the courthouse museum had given us. It made a great first stop. There’s also a tiny park across the street. That’s where we ate lunch. We had our leftovers from the night before. We also drank the last bottle of water from the pack we bought in Florida. After riding around in the car for something like 4,000 miles it ended up in… Tombstone.
Our next stop was the Bird Cage Theater. Maya was the one who was most excited about coming to Tombstone and the Bird Cage was the thing she was most excited about seeing. It’s supposed to be really haunted. We didn’t see any luminous shapes, hear anything weird, or walk though any cold spots, but there were some other people filming for ghosts and they said they felt something touch them. Irrespective of its paranormal aspects, it’s a really interesting place. It’s one of the few completely original buildings in the town. It was a regular theater and because there was so much money to be made in the boomtown many of the big name traveling acts of the day came to perform there despite the fact that it was so far from anything else. In addition to the performances there was plenty of liquor, lots of gambling and quite a few ladies of the evening. Maybe it’s best described as a saloon that also happened to have a stage. The opera box-looking booths above the gambling floor were where the various… um… assignations occurred. Downstairs were the really primo brothel rooms, in that they were actual rooms. The basement was also the location of the longest-running poker game in the Old West (possibly in history). People played non-stop for over 8 years and up to 10 million dollars passed across the table.
When the silver boom went bust the theater closed its doors. Nothing was picked up or put away, everyone was just sort of shooed out and the doors locked. No one disturbed it until the 1930s when it re-opened as a tourist attraction. The posters from the last performance still on the walls, barrels of whiskey still in the cellar, cards still strewn on the gaming tables; it’s this amazing time capsule. No wonder the long-dead like it so much.
Tombstone is also home to the world’s largest rose bush. The bush is certified each year by the Guinness Book of World Records. It currently covers more than 8,000 square feet. It rises up from its tree-like trunk and spreads across a trellis. You can walk under it and then go up a stairway to view it from above. It was not in bloom while we were there (that happens in April), but when it does bloom it is covered with millions of small white blooms. Those of you with access to a lot of old National Geographic Magazines, say every issue since 1964, can see a picture of the rose bush in bloom somewhere in the November 1997 issue. The bush is just one of the attractions at a former boarding-house turned museum. There are also some okay dioramas and (for some reason) a large collection of locks from around the world.
We made a visit to the offices of the Tombstone Epitaph. Founded by a truly accomplished adventurer and business fellow named John P. Clum in 1880, the Epitaph is today the oldest continuously-published paper in Arizona. Of course, it is no longer a daily, but prints large monthly issues with all kinds of scholarly and semi-scholarly articles on the Old West. We know this because Matt got a subscription to the paper. A year of history nerd guilty pleasure! How great.
Of course, the most famous place in Tombstone is the O. K. Corral. See, there was gun fight there in 1881 that has become somewhat famous. The O. K. Corral is today a big tourist trap with some kind of über-diorama called the Historama. We avoided it, but we went over to the gun fight site. See, the fight didn’t happen
at the O. K. Corral. Briefly, here’s the story: There had been long-standing tensions between a group of ranchers (and occasional cattle rustlers) derisively called the Cowboys. Ike Clanton was a successful rancher but a known associate of these rough folk. In town Virgil Earp was the City Marshal, Morgan Earp was his deputy, Wyatt Earp was running for County Sheriff and their hard-edged friend John “Doc” Holliday was a saloon keeper. There was some misunderstanding between the two sides that brought Ike to town quite mad where he drank and called for shooting down the Earps. The city police, lead by Virgil, took him at his word. After a night a boozing and glaring at each other over cards (yes, Ike and Virgil actually played cards together all night) the Earps assaulted Ike and his friend Tom McLaury, had their arms confiscated and fined them for carrying the weapons in town. Later that day Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury came to town on ranching business along with another friend Billy Claiborne. They soon learned of the troubles with their brothers earlier that day. Rather than disarm themselves as was required by law, they were observed buying ammunition. The Earps thought of these new Cowboys in town as “reinforcements” and gathered to forcibly disarm them (ostensibly still acting in an official police capacity). In a vacant lot behind the O. K. Corral the two sides met each other. There was a cursory request from the lawmen for the Cowboys to disarm. One person from each side fired at nearly the same time and then everybody with a gun was firing. There were about 30 shots fired in about 30 seconds. Exactly what happened, who shot whom, and what each party’s specific motivations were is still debated. The aftermath is not is question. Among the lawmen Holliday, Morgan and Virgil were all wounded, but not seriously. On the other side both McLaurys and Billy Clanton were killed. We saw their graves.
We saw them at Boothill Grave Yard. While the town might have been too tough to die, people still did. There are about 250 graves in the Boothill Grave Yard. Looking over the graves into the distance one can really feel how isolated a place this still is. Projecting back another 120 years, Tombstone must have been in its own little world during its hayday. A very interesting town. Well worth a visit.
The second day of our trip to Arizona’s southeast was spent in Tombstone. Is there any other town that is so quintessentially Old West? Probably not. Of course, a good-sized chunk of the morning was spent in just getting there. The town bills itself as “The Town Too Tough to Die.” We don’t know about all that, but you’ve had to have been tough to get there back in the day. Tougher still to stay there. It’s in such a barren stretch of country. As the miles roll by on smaller and smaller and roads you ask yourself why anyone ever went out there at all. Like many other places in Arizona the answer is simple: mining.
And people did come. First came the soldiers to secure the area and protect potential settlers from the encroached-upon (and therefore disgruntled) Apaches. Next came the miners. One Ed Schieffelin was told that if he went to mine all he would find would be his tombstone. Thumbing his nose at his critics he named his claim “Tombstone” and the settlement that grew up around it also took that name. With the settlement came equipment suppliers, saloon keepers (there were once 120 saloons) and “ladies of negotiable affection” to take some of that silver off the miners’ hands. Last of all the hills around town filled with ranchers and cowboys. Tombstone was such a boom town that it used to be the county seat of Cochise County. Cochise was the name of the Apache leader that all these people displaced.
The former courthouse is now a state historic park and a wonderful museum. That was our first stop when we reached town. Every aspect of life in the old west is covered from mining and ranching equipment to the rules of the town’s number one game: faro, from aspects of the domestic to famous legal proceedings. It offers an excellent over-view of the town’s history, a general feeling for life in the Old West and some specific information on the famous gunfight. All day long as we wondered the many other shops we kept thinking back to the context the courthouse museum had given us. It made a great first stop. There’s also a tiny park across the street. That’s where we ate lunch. We had our leftovers from the night before. We also drank the last bottle of water from the pack we bought in Florida. After riding around in the car for something like 4,000 miles it ended up in… Tombstone. 
Our next stop was the Bird Cage Theater. Maya was the one who was most excited about coming to Tombstone and the Bird Cage was the thing she was most excited about seeing. It’s supposed to be really haunted. We didn’t see any luminous shapes, hear anything weird, or walk though any cold spots, but there were some other people filming for ghosts and they said they felt something touch them. Irrespective of its paranormal aspects, it’s a really interesting place. It’s one of the few completely original buildings in the town. It was a regular theater and because there was so much money to be made in the boomtown many of the big name traveling acts of the day came to perform there despite the fact that it was so far from anything else. In addition to the performances there was plenty of liquor, lots of gambling and quite a few ladies of the evening. Maybe it’s best described as a saloon that also happened to have a stage. The opera box-looking booths above the gambling floor were where the various… um… assignations occurred. Downstairs were the really primo brothel rooms, in that they were actual rooms. The basement was also the location of the longest-running poker game in the Old West (possibly in history). People played non-stop for over 8 years and up to 10 million dollars passed across the table.
When the silver boom went bust the theater closed its doors. Nothing was picked up or put away, everyone was just sort of shooed out and the doors locked. No one disturbed it until the 1930s when it re-opened as a tourist attraction. The posters from the last performance still on the walls, barrels of whiskey still in the cellar, cards still strewn on the gaming tables; it’s this amazing time capsule. No wonder the long-dead like it so much.
Tombstone is also home to the world’s largest rose bush. The bush is certified each year by the Guinness Book of World Records. It currently covers more than 8,000 square feet. It rises up from its tree-like trunk and spreads across a trellis. You can walk under it and then go up a stairway to view it from above. It was not in bloom while we were there (that happens in April), but when it does bloom it is covered with millions of small white blooms. Those of you with access to a lot of old National Geographic Magazines, say every issue since 1964, can see a picture of the rose bush in bloom somewhere in the November 1997 issue. The bush is just one of the attractions at a former boarding-house turned museum. There are also some okay dioramas and (for some reason) a large collection of locks from around the world.
We made a visit to the offices of the Tombstone Epitaph. Founded by a truly accomplished adventurer and business fellow named John P. Clum in 1880, the Epitaph is today the oldest continuously-published paper in Arizona. Of course, it is no longer a daily, but prints large monthly issues with all kinds of scholarly and semi-scholarly articles on the Old West. We know this because Matt got a subscription to the paper. A year of history nerd guilty pleasure! How great. 
Of course, the most famous place in Tombstone is the O. K. Corral. See, there was gun fight there in 1881 that has become somewhat famous. The O. K. Corral is today a big tourist trap with some kind of über-diorama called the Historama. We avoided it, but we went over to the gun fight site. See, the fight didn’t happen at the O. K. Corral. Briefly, here’s the story: There had been long-standing tensions between a group of ranchers (and occasional cattle rustlers) derisively called the Cowboys. Ike Clanton was a successful rancher but a known associate of these rough folk. In town Virgil Earp was the City Marshal, Morgan Earp was his deputy, Wyatt Earp was running for County Sheriff and their hard-edged friend John “Doc” Holliday was a saloon keeper. There was some misunderstanding between the two sides that brought Ike to town quite mad where he drank and called for shooting down the Earps. The city police, lead by Virgil, took him at his word. After a night a boozing and glaring at each other over cards (yes, Ike and Virgil actually played cards together all night) the Earps assaulted Ike and his friend Tom McLaury, had their arms confiscated and fined them for carrying the weapons in town. Later that day Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury came to town on ranching business along with another friend Billy Claiborne. They soon learned of the troubles with their brothers earlier that day. Rather than disarm themselves as was required by law, they were observed buying ammunition. The Earps thought of these new Cowboys in town as “reinforcements” and gathered to forcibly disarm them (ostensibly still acting in an official police capacity). In a vacant lot behind the O. K. Corral the two sides met each other. There was a cursory request from the lawmen for the Cowboys to disarm. One person from each side fired at nearly the same time and then everybody with a gun was firing. There were about 30 shots fired in about 30 seconds. Exactly what happened, who shot whom, and what each party’s specific motivations were is still debated. The aftermath is not is question. Among the lawmen Holliday, Morgan and Virgil were all wounded, but not seriously. On the other side both McLaurys and Billy Clanton were killed. We saw their graves.
We saw them at Boothill Grave Yard. While the town might have been too tough to die, people still did. There are about 250 graves in the Boothill Grave Yard. Looking over the graves into the distance one can really feel how isolated a place this still is. Projecting back another 120 years, Tombstone must have been in its own little world during its hayday. A very interesting town. Well worth a visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment