Jan 26, 2023 Day 5, Benson, AZ

All the stories and movies about Tombstone paint a wild, west picture but after today’s visit, we learned it was wilder than we knew! Tombstone is located southeast of the campgrounds we are staying in and took us about 40 minutes to get there. We started on tour at the Visitors Center and collected a map along with some literature. There is a main street that looks like you stepped back in time to the mid-1800s. The streets are dirt, and the sidewalks are boardwalks. There are re-enactment actors and activities throughout the day, wagons trains and stagecoaches you can ride, and old-time storefronts are now businesses.

The most interesting aspect of it was the original Courthouse building. This is a State Historic Site and is packed with information, artifacts, and displays that are phenomenal. We spent several hours viewing the various displays, reading about how Tombstone got started, all about the famous gunfight at the OK Corral with the Erps and Doc Holiday, who shot it out with the Clanton’s and McLaury’s.

The town was originally settled by Ed Schieffelin. He was on a scouting voyage in Tombstone against the Chiricahua Apache’s. Ed was part of this mission and was staying at a place called Camp Huachuca. He would leave camp to look for rocks within the wilderness despite his fellow soldiers warning him against it and that the only thing he would find is ‘his Tombstone’. Fortunately for Ed, he did not find his tombstone, but he did find something else – silver. He named his first strike The Tombstone.

Word quickly spread about his silver strike, and it wasn’t long before homesteaders, cowboys, speculators, prospectors, lawyers, businessmen, and gunmen. At one point the population boomed to 20,000 and the town was considered the largest city between St Louis and San Francisco. During the boom, there were 100 saloons, a multitude of eateries, a huge red-light district, a large population of Chinese, newspapers, churches, and schools.

There are many stories here, that would take hours to write but of course, most of you have heard about the Erps, Doc Holiday, and the shootout at the OK Corral. We learned about the 5 men who robbed a bank in Bisbee, 4 of which were sentenced to hang but the ringleader who did not take part in the robbery was given a life sentence. The townspeople had a different idea of his justice, and a mob marched to the jail demanding he is released to them. The Sheriff relented and the mob hung the 5th outlaw.

We stopped also at Boot Hill Cemetery – yes, it really exists and was used during the 1870s and 1880s. Some of the graves are marked unknown but many have the name and cause of death on the wooden grave markers. The majority of deaths were murders over trivial things such as someone didn’t like the color of shirt he was wearing. ‘Here Lies Lester Moore, 4 slugs by a 44, no Les, no More’. ‘Here’s Lies George Johnson, hanged by mistake, he was right, we was wrong, but we strung him up and now he’s gone. ‘ And many more of the same!

Tonight is our last night at Kartchner Caverns State Park – it was awesome!