Tombstone, AZ

The Elk’s Lodge in Sierra Vista has a nice camping area nearby and there is no train that runs all night nearby as was the case in Willcox. So after a good night’s sleep it was off to Tombstone on Thursday morning. Indeed it is a place for tourists and that is just what we are.

We strolled down the street listening to the clip clop of the horses pulling the tourist mail wagon in the “town too tough to die!”

At one time Tombstone was the county seat which was later moved to Bisbee when the silver mine flooded and the population dwindled. The courthouse is a fine museum and it is inconceivable to us that the state can’t afford to keep it open and plans to close it at the end of March.

At the OK Corral we watched a multimedia presentation about the history of the town and it’s famous, or infamous gunfight, depending on how you look at it. We then filled the bleachers with 300 other mostly old people and enjoyed the reenactment of the gunfight in which Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers killed the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton. They are buried at Boothill.

According to the locals, Wyatt Earp and his brothers were not the good people! But for the popularity of the gunfight, I think Tombstone might just have become another ghost town. And yet it was once larger than San Francisco!

A tour of the Boothill Cemetery provided some comic relief. Most of the people buried there did not die of natural causes according to historical records and family interviews used to help recreate the long forgotten cemetery.