Arizona felt good. Warm. Sunny. Wide open freeways with a 130 km/hr speed limit upon which to cruise with my beloved little VW rental Bug towards places in which I was years overdue. Not to mention I know a lot of people who were in Arizona at the time, making for a lot of pleasant visits. I can't think of anything cheesier to say than "I had to go to Tombstone, it was my spiritual destiny." So I am going to say it, because it sounds funny, but in absolutely no way is it my spiritual destiny, unless perhaps I lived in another time as Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp, preferably not the sadly named and undesirably occupied Big Nose Kate. It is however one of those places I am drawn to. I like to see old places, old items, and the most fun of all is the places or items that are associated with a story. Seeing a teacup in the museum that says it belonged to Lady Baldwin in 1732 is not enough...it leaves too much to the imagination. Give me a historical figure with a well known story...the stuff of legends...I would line up to see Lady Diana's dress collection (which toured Canada when I was in Bermuda but I missed it), and I would drive 2 hours (4 hours round trip) just to see where this place of legends called Tombstone is. Is there a draw to the town that the people who came to live and die there that can still be felt today? I figured I was too close to not check it out myself for the answer. So me, the Bug, and my friend Cathy hit the road with a 4 hour drive and a 5 hour window of time. I am not one to linger long in places...I know.
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| Truth: Big Nose Kate was a real person, with a real saloon, and had there been time, it would have been a fun place to eat. It looked like a Cowboy Hard Rock Café inside. |
Tombstone was essentially 'founded' as a single silver claim in 1877. But there was so much silver that Tombstone became one of the last, the biggest, richest, wildest towns in the west. A whole lot of sin, wealth, rough work, and high living was crammed into the years of prosperity, 1879-1886. 7 years. That's the amount of time it took to make this little town a standing legend for 119 years and counting. And in that time, it's population rose from 100 to 14,000 people. It produced $85M in silver (that buys a looooot of anything and everything in 1877 money). For services, it had 1 school, 1 bowling alley, 1 ice house, 1 ice cream parlour, 2 banks, 3 newspapers, 4 churches, 14 gambling halls, and 110 saloons (think booze and ladies of the night). That pretty much confirms the rumours of the wild west.
Tombstone is a fair distance from anywhere now. In 1877, it would have seemed another world. One of the closest places I noticed road signs to, is Nogales, Mexico. It was hard to miss the turnoff as an impromptu encampment of border patrol had popped up on the road as we drove by. The Mexican border is only 33 miles south of Tombstone. This meant cattle rustling was another way of life in Tombstone, and the gang thought to be the biggest player in cattle theft and transfer across the border called themselves "The Cowboys." No kidding.
The Cowboys, and some of its members who also allegedly delved a little into stagecoach robbery/murder got into a long standing dispute with the Sheriff, Wyatt Earp. One fateful day, the conflict came to a head when Wyatt, with his two deputized brothers, and an unlikely besty, one gunfighter known as Doc Holliday faced off against several members of the cowboys. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, one likely stiflingly hot Wednesday in October 1881 when the most famous gunfight in the history of the old West erupted not at the OK Corral...but 6 doors down in an empty lot. The way it happened was the men faced each other, at a distance of about 2 metres, and in less than 30 seconds 30 shot were fired and 3 of the "Cowboys" were dead. Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp's two brothers were injured but survived the day.
Rumors persist to this day in new books, and back then people took sides. Doc Holliday was charged with murder along with Wyatt Earp and his brothers (recall they were the law), but they were all acquitted. However, both of Wyatt's brothers were eventually shot in the 5 months following the event in the streets or saloons of Tombstone by parties who disagreed with the verdict. Morgan died in Tombstone from his gunshot wounds. (Virgil was maimed but survived an earlier attack), and 2 days later Earp, Holliday, and a few other friends went on the hunt for two of the suspected perpetrators. This particular fight and its participants eventually left Tombstone. Doc succumbed to his tuberculosis in Colorado in 1886, and Colorado is where the Earp's and another big name old West friend, Bat Masterson ended up, leaving Tombstone to its wild ways in the peak of its prosperity. Yet they are forever associated with it.
Although Wyatt Earp is said to be the toughest lawman in the West, it should also be mentioned that before and after he wore the badge, he ran afoul of the law and was accused of multiple thefts, he was at the least a saloon bouncer and at worst a pimp, he consorted with prostitutes and opium fiends, indeed had one for a common law wife whom he abandoned and left to her own suicide, and I am sure there is much much more. Like the old photos of the west, morality seemed to have no black or white in Tombstone, it was all shades of grey.
And so I looked out on Tombstone. It sits amidst nondescript taupe hills with innumerable but well separated cacti dotting those hillsides. Wikipedia say it has a population of 1400, but I cannot imagine where 1400 people live in that small town. I reckon it seemed like less. It feels far away from everything, which maybe makes it easier to imagine it as closer to a historical time. The old "Tough Nut" mine is closed, and the town main street is restored in a way that looks a little gimmicky but preserves the name and as much of the old buildings as possible. The Bird Cage saloon (the wickedest wildest saloon in the west) still stands and a $10 fee will get you beyond the foyer and into the back with a ghost tour. I settled for a snapshot of this steer's head, which stands close to a poster advertising an entertainer named Josephine...Wyatt Earp's lover.
In the end, I did not feel any sense of history beneath my feet. The bustle of 14,000 folk is gone, and of the 110 saloons, only a handful of those original buildings remain. The remoteness and the mid-winter heat made me like the place, and perhaps a few like the ailing gunfighter Doc Holliday came for that very reason. But the riches and their allure left long ago. I wished for a bit more of a deeper moment standing on that historic street, but perhaps Tombstone's short but volatile history leaves more legends than it does impressions in time and the stark landscape the town sits on. I wasn't disappointed though. I wanted to see the land and the streets where these famous characters lived out some famous events. I confess, it is the somewhat tragic life of Doc Holliday that was the root of my compulsion to see this place. A man who lived knowing his death from the age of 22, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis (after watching his mother and brother die from it when he was 15). A gentleman dentist from Georgia turned gambling, drinking, gunfighting, dying legend by 22, compliments of a little bacteria we give little thought to in the first world today.
So yes, in the end, I enjoyed Tombstone as it stands today, but mostly I just loved that I finally stood where legends tread more than a hundred years ago.
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