If
you’re stopping by Cowboy Kisses,
most
likely it’s because you’re interested in the historic west.
And if you’re interested in the historic
west, most likely you know a reasonable amount about the gunfight at the O.K.
Corral, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Doc Holliday, and
Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone, of course, was made famous by that
gunfight; had it not been for the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp, most likely
Tombstone would have gone the way of many old mining towns and become a true ghost
town, or possibly it would be some artists’ enclave like nearby Bisbee.
But the gunfight did take place, and it took
place at a time when Tombstone was a thriving metropolis, as difficult as that
is to envisage now.
If
you need a quick refresher course on the gunfight behind the O.K. Corral and
are reluctant to head to Wiki or grab a relevant issue of ‘True West’ magazine,
let me briefly recount what happened. At
approximately 3 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, town Marshal Virgil Earp
along with brothers Wyatt (a former Kansas lawman from Dodge City) and Morgan,
as well as pal Doc Holliday, faced down the brothers Ike and Billy Clanton,
Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy
Claiborne, and had a shoot-out in the most historic 30 seconds of the Old
West. And why did this occur? In 1881, tensions from the War Between the
States hung on. In Tombstone, antagonism
between the lawmen—representing the Republican north, capitalists and upright
townspeople—and the Cowboys (giving them a bad name much to my personal
consternation!), who were mostly former Confederates and Democrats, not to
mention cattle rustlers, all boiled over, along with personal animosities. Thirty bullets later, Billy Clanton and the
McLaury brothers lay dead, three of the lawmen—not Wyatt—were wounded, and Ike
Clanton the coward and Billy Claiborne had taken off.
In the representation shown here, based on a sketch
Wyatt drew some years before he passed, one can see at what close quarters the
shoot-out took place. Ike Clanton is not represented because Wyatt refused to
acknowledge the presence of the “coward.”
But whoever was there, those 30 seconds tossed Tombstone into eternal recognition.
So,
what was Tombstone like at that time? Was it worth the attention the gunfight seems
to have merited? Tombstone was then the
county seat of Cochise County, created in February of that year out of part of
Pima County, Territory of Arizona. Settled in 1877, by 1879 it was prospering and well on its way to
producing the forty plus million dollars worth of silver bullion it would
present. From a population of around one
hundred, it soared to over fourteen thousand, and with that populace came the
amenities to entertain, feed, and service the people. Night spots such as The Bird Cage vied with
an opera house for the upper crust.
Dance halls and gambling joints, brothels, soiled doves’ cribs, and one hundred ten saloons sat alongside a
bowling alley, an ice cream parlor, a school, two banks and four churches. Society was fluid: a miner one day might be a millionaire the
next. And there were three newspapers.
If
you read the copy of
The Tombstone Epitaph from the day after the
shoot-out,
the most interesting items are not necessarily the statements from so-called witnesses, but the advertisements in the margins that indicate the kind of town Tombstone was. Yes, there
are things that we'd expect:
Tuttle’s
Tombstone Corral with accommodation for 100 horses; Spagenberg’s Gunsmith and
Locksmith; Risdon Iron and Locomotive Works for Engines and Boilers; the
Tombstone Carriage Shop; Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett Hardware; and Fish
Bros. Wagon Company, along with the Arizona Mail and Stage Line; Watt &
Tarbell Undertakers; and Mme. LeDeau’s, which asks you to “ask any man.” But there
is also Pioneer Baking Powder, Mooney’s Fashion Saloon, 4-Paws Monster Railroad
Circus,
a Tonsorial Palace, and Estey’s
Pianos.
Of
course, as the silver ran out, so did the population. In 1929, the County Seat of Cochise moved to
Bisbee where it is today, and Tombstone would have become one more true ghost
town near the Mexican border—except for one thing, and we know what that
was. As I drove down from the
ever-growing Tucson, through windswept open spaces punctuated by towns not much
more than trailer settlements, the feeling that civilization was being left
behind was intense. Now that the main
thoroughfare of Tombstone is pedestrianized, it more resembles what it once
was, except for the different uses of the buildings. The saloons are now family eateries with live
music—and the one we attended, the Crystal Palace, had the worst live
entertainment I’ve encountered anywhere, anytime. The usual southwestern shops are there: native American jewelry mixed with western souvenirs. And the fact that there is a six dollar
charge to stand on the hallowed ground of the O.K. Corral, see their museum,
and pick up a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph from the day after the
shoot-out, rather detracts from the whole experience.
But
as the wind howled and moaned, banging saloon doors and sending signs
clattering with ghostly whines, tumbleweed rolling down the dirt streets, and a
stagecoach lurching through town, Tombstone stepped away from its Disney-like
existence, and for one brief moment the desertion and silence of the residents' prior to the gunfight became real. Maybe
it is a ghost of itself, but Tombstone, for now, isn’t dead nor dying.
