Tombstone, "The Town too Tough to Die". Hill

We have a happy Jim this evening after a day in Tombstone. First stop was Boothill where Jim saw the grave markers that he has been talking about non-stop!

Dunlap, one of a band of train robbers, attempted to rob an express car which Milton guarded. He was critically wounded and his friends left him to die. He was found and brought to Tombstone, where he lived long enough to inform on his friends.

Jim is constantly quoting this in a fake American accent.

The characters who were shot in the gunfight at the OK Corral.

He, with several other men, was ambushed on a cattle drive by Mexicans. All but one man were killed.

The beautiful setting of Boot Hill and of Tombstone where the most awful crimes were committed!

Lots of unknowns! One of the unknowns was found in an abandoned mine, 1882. He was found at the bottom of a 60-foot shaft of the Minute Mine. He was well-dressed, indicating he was not a miner. There was no identification of any kind.

John Heath was called the leader of the 5 men who were legally hanged and was said to have planned the robbery. He was hanged from a telegraph pole a short distance west of the Court House.

Moore was a Wells Fargo agent at Naco and had a dispute with a man over a package. Both died. (Information from an old resident.)

She had great influence among the Chinese residents in Boothill. Some believed she had Tong affiliation in China.

J. Gardiner was shot by Kellogg (whoever he was). Two saloon men were also indicted for the killing.

There were lots more that Jim didn't photograph. A Van Houten, beaten in the face with a stone until he died. Trouble was over his mining claim, which he had not recorded. There was Chas Helm who was shot in 1882 by Wm. McCauley. Two hot-tempered ranchers, who disagreed over the best way to drive cattle, fast or slow. There was Frank Bowles whose horse became frightened and threw him off. This called a rifle to discharge and badly injure his knee. He lay in camp for several weeks without medical attention and when friends took him to a doctor for amputation it was too late. There was Wm. Bobier, in 1881. He and his partner disagreed over a cockfight with tragic results! In the main it shows how having guns, lethal weapons, means that no other ways of settling things were used! And there were lots of children and babies and people who died from natural causes or from the deprivations of their lives.

Because of the many violent deaths of the early days, the cemetery became known as Boothill Graveyard. Buried here are outlaws with their victims, suicides and hangings, legal and otherwise, along with the hardy citizens and refined element of Tombstone's first days.

Next stop The Tombstone Courthouse.

Doc Holliday, friend of Wyatt Earp, deputised by him to help him disarm the cowboys who were waiting to confront Doc when he returned to his rented room at Fly's. He died 6 years later of TB.

Geronimo.

Tombstone is full of saloons, souvenir shops, galleries with indian handcrafts etc - all set up for the tourist. They even say "Howdy" here.

We were advised to eat in the Crystal Palace but it was very busy so we went across the road to the Longhorn Restaurant where we had an excellent lunch and enjoyed ourselves reading the old-fashioned plaques etc. Jim particularly enjoyed the above. I really enjoyed the next one!

It recommended that you inflate the bosom every year. It also said that in the event of an accident at sea, if you were wearing the inflatable bosom you were virtually guaranteed not to drown!

There was a lot of debauchery in this town!

A hearse.

"Soiled Dove", euphemism for prostitute!

This is the set of the re-enactment of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. We were encouraged to cheer for the lawmen and boo and hiss at the cowboys so it was clear that the whole thing was a farce (to be honest, a rather poor attempt at acting and so hammed up as to be, dare I say it, rubbish!) At any rate, every time a gun went off I jumped. How much more would I have jumped if I had known, at the time, of what had happened at the reenactment 2 days previously. In fact I would not have been there.

On Sunday October 18th, 2 people were hit with (real!) bullets during a reenactment of the OK Corral gunfight. One of the actors' guns fired live rounds injuring a fellow cast member and grazing a member of the audience! Normally the actors' guns are checked to ensure they are using blanks but the actor had arrived late and his gun wasn't checked. Suspicious or what? There's no knowing what will happen in a country where having a gun is considered the norm!

Tours of Tombstone.

The Historama about the town of Tombstone was very interesting and is done in an interesting way. It is a combination of a big lumpy mound on a turntable with vignettes of Tombstones history  and a projection screen that lowers to show western movie clips and raises to reveal that the mound has turned to reveal another vignette. To depict fires that destroyed Tombstone, tiny red lights flicker in a few buildings. The story is narrated by Vincent Price which I thought was strange as he is assoiciated with horrors films not westerns.



Tombstone was founded in 1877 by a prospector called Ed Schieffelin. Ed was staying at Camp Huachuca as part of a scouting expedition against the Chiricahua Apaches. During his time there he used to go out in the wilderness looking for rocks. The soldiers at the camp warned him that all he would find was his tombstone. On one occasion he did find his rock and it was silver! So remembering the words of the soldiers he called his first mine Tombstone. Hearing about his silver strike, people flocked to the area and a town had to be set up and was named Tombstone.

So that was our day in Tombstone - Jim satisfied and Fionnuala not awfully impressed!