By James Abarr Of the Journal
TOMBSTONE, Ariz. — Ed Schieffelin had spent his life prospecting across America's frontier West, but he had little to show for his years of scratching and digging in what seemed likely places to tap the riches of the earth.
A wanderer whose eyes were always on distant horizons, his fortunes took a new turn in 1877, when he rode with an Army column from California into Fort Huachuca in the harsh desert of southern Arizona.
As he rested at the fort trying to decide his next move, Schieffelin was intrigued by the bleak country to the northeast. He had a growing sense that it was there, in that desolate Apache-dominated expanse, that he would find his long-sought bonanza. When he headed northeast from the fort with his heavily-laden mule, he was stung by the farewell taunt of the soldiers. They warned: "All you will find is your tombstone."
As it happened, the soldiers were right; Ed did find his tombstone, but it wasn't what the cavalrymen envisioned. In a range of dark-appearing hills along the San Pedro River, between the Dragoon and Whetstone Mountains, the steadfast prospector struck a vein of almost pure silver in a rocky outcropping.
When he rode across 75 miles of desert to Tucson to file his claim, he was asked what he wanted to call his discovery. Remembering the taunts of the soldiers, Schieffelin replied: "The Tombstone."
Within a year, Schieffelin, who by now had teamed with his brother, Al, and a friend, Dick Gird, made additional strikes along the San Pedro — "The Graveyard" and "The Toughnut." These strikes, which assayed about $2,000 a ton, were small pickings compared to what lay ahead.
One day in late 1878, while hunting deer near his earlier strikes, Ed sank his miner's pick into a likely appearing rock at the base of a hill and discovered "The Lucky Cuss," the prize he had sought for so many years.
In his memoirs, he confided: "I was considerably excited when we learned that samples assayed at $15,000 to the ton."
One rich strike followed another, for Schieffelin had tapped what would be known as "Loma de Plata," the Hill of Silver.
News of the discoveries in southeast Arizona spread like wildfire, and from throughout the West, hundreds flocked to the hills along the San Pedro.
They were men and women of every stripe — miners, adventurers, gamblers, swindlers, merchants, lawyers, physicians, laborers, saloon keepers, thieves, killers and madames.
As the miners swarmed over the desert hills, a lusty settlement of tents and sheds sprang up at their foot. It took its name from Schieffelin's first strike, and in February 1879, Tombstone, a brawling silver camp excited by its new riches, was born. From its birth, it was a place ruled by the law of the Colt and the Winchester, and it would rapidly become the deadliest and most infamous place on the Western frontier.
A bustling community
Within a year, more than 500 buildings were raised in the fast-growing settlement, which was laid out in a rectangle. From north to south, Stafford, Fremont, Allen and Toughnut were the town's four principal east-west streets. These broad, dusty thoroughfares, 60 feet wide, were intersected by 10 north-south streets, numbered from First to Tenth.
By late 1880, nearly 5,000 people had swarmed into Tombstone; a year later, there were more than 10,000 residents. Stores, hotels, restaurants, saloons, gambling houses and dance halls jammed an area a half-mile long and a quarter-mile wide. Board sidewalks flanked buildings of both frame and adobe contruction with wooden awnings to deflect the scorching Arizona sun.
John Clum, founder and editor of the Tombstone Epitaph and the town's first mayor in 1881, predicted that "Tombstone will vie with Rome upon her seven hills."
Others echoed the mayor with boasts that the town was on a path to rival San Francisco.
Allen Street was a bustling commercial center by day that gave no hint of the bedlam it became after dark. The saloons and gambling palaces, sandwiched between the mercantile shops, spawned arguments, brawls and shootouts that lent credence to Tombstone's indelicate boast of "a dead man every morning for breakfast."
As the town grew ever larger, lusty Allen Street went non-stop, 24 hours a day, with entertainment designed to separate the rich miners from their money.
Glittering saloons such as the Crystal Palace, the Oriental and the Alhambra, with their long bars of glossy wood, imported glass chandeliers, artwork and felt-covered gambling tables, dispensed the finest whiskey and wines in an atmosphere punctuated by brawls and deadly gunfights.
In August 1880, Clara Brown, a correspondent, told her newspaper in a dispatch from Tombstone:
"Saloon openings are all the rage here. The Oriental is simply gorgeous. The mahogany bar is a marvel of beauty. The gaming room is carpeted in Brussels, brilliantly lighted and furnished with reading matter for its patrons. Every evening there is the music of a violin and piano which attracts a crowd, and the scene is a gay one."
One of Tombstone's most combustible establishments was the Bird Cage Theatre, which offered a smorgasbord of delights ranging from whiskey and gambling to vaudeville acts, to attempts at culture in dramatic readings and Shakespearean plays.
At the same time, "soiled doves," a euphemism for frontier prostitutes, entertained their customers in 14 cagelike compartments, lined with plush red drapes and suspended from the ceiling above the gambling casino and dance hall. These "cages" gave the Bird Cage its name.
In 1881, The New York Times billed it as "the wildest spot between Basin Street (New Orleans) and the Barbary Coast (San Francisco)."
Bird Cage owners Billie and Lottie Hutchison required that patrons check their guns at the door, but it was a rule poorly enforced. As the whiskey flowed and gambling stakes grew, arguments and gunfights erupted, and before long, more than 100 bullet holes marred the walls. Casualties in all this were never totaled, but one visitor claimed to have witnessed a fight that left 12 men dead.
One Bird Cage story recounts the night an itinerant magician told his audience he would catch bullets in his teeth. As an assistant fired blank cartridges, the magician spat out bullets he had concealed in his mouth.
A drunken patron in the audience took exception to this obvious trickery and decided to give the magician the ultimate test. Drawing his six-gun, he shouted: "Catch this one, professor!"
Fortunately for the magician, a fast-thinking spectator jarred the gunman's arm and the shot went wild, reportedly "leaving the quaking target to make his exit with a minimum of dignity and a maximum of haste."
Despite the young town's wild and reckless lifestyle, there were those who — perhaps with tongue in cheek — foresaw more sedate days ahead. In a letter in 1880, Magistrate Judge Wells Spicer expressed his belief that Tombstone would eventually acquire something approaching civility. He noted that there were a dozen gambling halls, two dance halls and more than 20 saloons.
"Still" he wrote, "there is hope, for I know of two Bibles in town."
For the time being, however, Tombstone would remain a rowdy, hell-raising and dangerous place.
While many residents took this in stride, the editor of the Tombstone Nugget, a rival of The Epitaph, thought things were getting out of hand the night a group of "lewd women" and their male friends celebrated in the street with blazing six-guns.
Angrily, the editor expounded: "We live mostly in canvas houses here and when lunatics like those who fired so promiscuously the other night are on the rampage, it ain't safe, nohow."
A brutal land
Surrounding Tombstone was a wild and brutal country of mountains, sagebrush, rocks and cactus. It was a land of marauding Apaches and outlaws and thousands of square miles of desert baked by furnacelike heat throughout much of the year.
Indians ambushed travelers and killed ranchers. Rustlers preyed on cattle herds, and bandits robbed stagecoaches and wagon trains with impunity. Only the courageous, or perhaps foolish, traveled alone.
Even in Tombstone, life was not much safer, for the town was dominated by the ruthless "Cowboys," a band of vicious men who had been schooled in the Texas cattle wars of the 1870s. As one historian described them: "They were a collection of killers, which for wholesale infamy, was seldom equaled."
Foremost among the Cowboys were the forces of Old Man Clanton, who owned a large ranch south of Tombstone that was often suspected of being well-stocked with rustled cattle. His initials were N.H., but even in court records and other official papers, he was simply listed as "Old Man."
Providing Clanton's muscle were his gunslinging sons, Billy, Ike and Phineas, who were backed by, among others:
* William "Curley Bill" Brocius, a savage and arrogant killer. One historian described him as "a man for whom brutality and murder were routine."
* Johnny Ringo, whose real name was Ringgold, a Texas gunfighter with a temper so vicious and unpredictable that an acquaintance once remarked: "At times, even his friends avoid him."
* Frank McLaury, a rancher and known rustler reputed to be one of the deadliest marksmen in the territory.
* Tom McLaury, his brother, also a rustler and sometime gunman.
These were the principal members of the Cowboys, whose ranks numbered in the dozens, and citizens of Tombstone could easily identify them by the bright red sashes they wore around their waists.
By and large, the Cowboys were able to perpetuate their reign of crime and terror because they had a sympathetic friend in Johnny Behan, who had been appointed sheriff of newly-created Cochise County, of which Tombstone was the county seat.
Behan, himself a man of dubious character, liked the power that came with wearing a badge, and he knew he had little chance of re-election without the backing of the Cowboys, some of whom he made his deputies. Thus he remained sympathetic to their interests, legal and otherwise.
As historian and author Stuart Lake noted:
"It was the age-old system. Government offices were filled with unscrupulous tricksters. Under their protection, desperadoes robbed, smuggled, rustled cattle, held up stage coaches and killed all who opposed them ... and Tombstone became their headquarters."
'Lion of Tombstone'
Into the midst of this turbulence rode a no-nonsense former lawman who would have a deadly impact on the Cowboys and forever be hailed as "The Lion of Tombstone."
Wyatt Earp, a native of Illinois, had been a marshal who forged a reputation as a lawman not to be trifled with in the tough Kansas cattle towns of Ellsworth, Wichita and Dodge City during the 1870s. When he arrived in Tombstone in December 1879, however, he had relinquished his badge to pursue new ventures in a land ripe for quick wealth.
Earp had no interest in mining, but he was an astute businessman who invested heavily in Tombstone real estate. He also was a professional gambler. To that end, he bought a one-quarter interest in the faro game at the Alhambra, where as a dealer, he took a percentage of the nightly gross.
An acquaintance described Earp as "a handsome six-footer, lean and hard and in his early 30s. He moved gracefully and his demeanor was dignified. His eyes were cold blue, his hair brown, and his moustache swept luxuriantly above a firm mouth. He was a quiet dresser and usually wore the long, black coat, or duster, common among Western lawmen."
Even though Earp had abandoned law enforcement to concentrate on other pursuits, his reputation as a lawman had preceded him, and within a month of his arrival in Arizona he was offered a post as deputy sheriff and tax collector of Pima County, a job he accepted and later resigned when the new Cochise County was created out of Pima. In late 1880, he accepted an appointment as deputy U.S. marshal for the Tombstone district.
Earp was soon joined in Tombstone by his brothers, Virgil, Morgan and James. Virgil, the oldest, and Morgan were both adept with a six-gun, but James was a man of more-peaceful pursuits and remained largely in the background as a Tombstone bartender and later a farmer.
Not long after their arrival in Arizona, the tight-knit Earps acquired an ally when John "Doc" Holliday came to Tombstone. Doc was a professional gambler and gunman who had once saved Wyatt's life during a face-off with a mob in Dodge City.
Alcoholic and dying of tuberculosis at age 28, Doc Holliday had been a dentist in his native Georgia and had come West apparently to find a swift death, for he seemed to pick quarrels in the hope that some opponent's bullet would beat his slow and deadly disease to the punch.
Doc had a reputation as a fast gun, and friends described him as "a walking cadaver often given to severe coughing spells and possessed of a flash temper and cold-blooded readiness to kill."
Almost from the day of their arrival in town, the Earps, Holliday and the Cowboys tangled. It was plain that Tombstone wasn't big enough for the two factions. Even though there were a number of scrapes, the first deadly clash didn't occur until October 1880, when "Curley Bill" Brocius, falling-down drunk and waving two six-guns, decided to shoot up Allen Street.
Fred White, the town marshal, attempted to disarm Brocius and was fatally wounded.
As White collapsed near the corner of Sixth and Allen, Wyatt moved in behind Brocius, flattened him with a blow from the long barrel of his Colt, and dragged him to jail. At the same time, he pistol-whipped and jailed Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury, when they attempted to help their drunken buddy.
On the following day, the three Cowboys were released by Judge Spicer after the dying Marshal White had given a death-bed statement that the shooting was accidental and had happened when he seized the barrel of one of Brocius' guns and it had discharged.
As he released the three Cowboys, Spicer warned them against future drunken celebrations with firearms.
Years later, Wyatt told his biographer, Stuart Lake:
"They remembered their sore heads longer than they did the judge's warning. They never forgot that manhandling."
The deadly showdown
Virgil Earp succeeded White as marshal of Tombstone, and Morgan served as his deputy. Wyatt, in his capacity as deputy U.S. marshal, often stepped in to assist his brothers as they sought to keep the Cowboys in check. It was clear that the death of White had set the two factions on a collision course.
Bitter feelings festered for a year, and then, on Oct. 26, 1881, they erupted in gunsmoke and death at the OK Corral, probably the most famous shootout in Western annals.
Spurred by Ike Clanton's drunken threats that the Cowboys intended to kill the Earps on sight, Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan, accompanied by Doc Holliday, faced off against Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury and sometime Cowboy follower Billy Claiborne.
Virgil Earp made a bid to disarm the Cowboys, but they were in a killing mood, and in a span of 30 seconds, the gunfight that has echoed down through the intervening years was over.
Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers lay dead; Virgil and Morgan Earp and Holliday were wounded; Wyatt was unscathed.
Ike Clanton and Claiborne threw down their weapons and fled.
Next day, the Epitaph reported the battle in a detailed front-page story, but the headline said it all:
"Three Men Hurled Into Eternity in the Duration of a Moment."
In the aftermath of the OK Corral, Sheriff Behan, stung by the swift demise of three of his Cowboy pals and always alert for a way to plague the Earps, brought murder charges against the brothers and Holliday.
Magistrate Judge Spicer heard the case, and after 30 days of testimony from the defendants and witnesses, he ruled that the Earps were justified in their acts.
Said Spicer: "They were officers charged with the duty of arresting and disarming brave and determined men who were experts in the use of firearms ... and who had previously declared their intentions not to be arrested or disarmed. ...
"Considering the many threats that have been made against the Earps, I can attach no criminality to their act."
However, the Earps were not free of the enmity of the Cowboys, who became more determined than ever to kill the brothers, and they swore to avenge the deaths of their three friends.
In December 1881, two months after the OK Corral, Virgil Earp was ambushed while making his nightly rounds of establishments along Allen Street. Five shotgun blasts erupted from a darkened alley. One struck the marshal in the side, breaking ribs, and one shattered his left arm, leaving him partially handicapped for the rest of his life.
In March 1882, Morgan Earp was playing pool in Bob Hatch's saloon on Allen Street when two slugs from a Colt .45, fired from the alley through a rear window, shattered his spine. Morgan died several hours later.
It didn't take long for Wyatt to avenge his brothers.
A week later, Wyatt accompanied Virgil and his wife as far as Tucson, where Morgan's body was put aboard a train to California for burial. They arrived in Tucson at night, and on a darkened station platform, a figure emerged from the shadows and opened fire. Wyatt returned the fire and killed Frank Stilwell, a well-known member of the Cowboys and later identified as one of Morgan's killers.
When he returned to Tombstone, Wyatt was determined to end the Cowboy reign once and for all.
Witnesses had testified before a coroner's jury that they had seen "Curley Bill" Brocius and Florentino Cruz, also known as Indian Charley, fleeing from the alley behind the saloon where Morgan was gunned down. Arrest warrants were issued and Wyatt deputized a posse. He tracked the suspected killers into the Whetstone Mountains west of Tombstone and killed them both in gunfights when they resisted arrest.
When Wyatt cornered "Curley Bill" at a water hole known as Iron Springs, the Cowboy leader let loose with a hurried shotgun blast that tore through the edge of the marshal's long duster. Earp, also wielding a shotgun, swiftly fired both barrels, cutting "Curley Bill" nearly in half.
Wyatt recalled the moment years later when he told Stuart Lake:
"I can see Curley's left eye squinted shut and his right squinting over that shotgun at me to this day, and I remember thinking as I felt my coat jerk with his fire, 'He missed me; I can't miss him,' and I gave him both barrels to make sure."
Sheriff Behan again brought murder charges against Earp, but the marshal ignored them and continued his campaign against the Cowboys, which resulted in other deaths and arrests. At length, with their key leaders dead and fearful of the avenging Earp, many of the remaining members of the band fled from Arizona. The power of the Cowboys had been broken.
Months later, Ike Clanton, one of the few surviving leaders, was killed when he attempted to rustle cattle near Tombstone and was trapped by a posse. Johnny Ringo was found dead in a desert canyon, his body propped against a cactus and a bulllet through his head. His killer remains unknown.
In May 1882, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday rode out of Tombstone forever, passing through Albuquerque on their way to Colorado. A few years later, the pending murder warrant against Wyatt was dismissed as politically motivated.
Doc entered a tuberculosis sanitarium in Colorado, where he died in 1888.
Wyatt traveled throughout the West, but he never again put on a badge. He invested in oil wells, mining and real estate and died a successful businessman in Los Angeles in 1929. He was 81.
'Too Tough To Die'
By 1886, Dame Fortune had turned her back on silver-rich Tombstone. Underground water flooded the richest and deepest mines. This disaster, coupled with labor strikes and fires, which destroyed pumping and hoisting equipment, forced most of the mines — which had produced more than $30million in silver in seven years — to shut down. Production at the few remaining shafts fell more than 50 percent.
Almost overnight, the silver boom collapsed. Hundreds of residents sold their homes and businesses for the price of a stagecoach ticket out of town. Others merely abandoned their property and walked away.
Within a year, there were efforts to pump out the mines and reopen them, and die-hard souls predicted that a new era of riches would follow. However, it was not to be, and the town never regained its former stature. As historian/author Douglas Martin wrote:
"Once again the clouds of dust hung heavy above the desert trails, and campfires flickered in the chill winds of the mountain passes, but this time, Tombstone and hope lay far behind."
It would remain until the 1950s, in the days when once-roaring Tombstone lay almost moribund, that the few remaining residents looked around and decided that the future lay in the violent past. A campaign to sell the town's colorful history was launched.
Today, nearly 1,500 people, many of them descendants of early-day settlers, live in Tombstone, where tourism has replaced silver as the major industry. Each year, the town is host to thousands of visitors from throughout the world who come to see an American frontier legend.
A host of gift and souvenir shops, art galleries and a bed-and-breakfast have replaced the saloons and gambling halls on once-bawdy Allen Street. At Sixth and Allen, a green and yellow marquee still proclaims the Bird Cage Theatre, the town's only original building from the 1880s.
At Third and Fremont, a plaque on the rear wall of the OK Corral marks the site of the Earp-Clanton gunfight.
On the northwest side of Tombstone, where the highway angles out across the desert to Benson, Boot Hill looms above the sprawling San Pedro Valley. Both the famous and the little-known lie here in the desert soil among the ocotillo and the prickly pear cactus in neatly-raked graves topped by rock pyramids and simple markers.
A simple cross proclaims the grave of Marshal Fred White with the notation: "Marshal White, Killed by Curley Bill."
Not far away, three slab markers identify the last resting place of Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton with the editorialized epitaph: "Murdered on the Streets of Tombstone 1881."
There is also the humorous on Boot Hill, which obviously is of little comfort to the deceased. A tall, thin marker on the grave of a George Johnson proclaims in rhyme:
"Hanged by Mistake 1882 "He was right "We was wrong "But we strung him up "And now he's gone"
Through silver and sin, outlaws, corruption and death, through two fires that decimated half the community in 1882 and 1886, and the crushing loss of a rich industy, Tombstone, now a National Historic Landmark, has survived — and its future seems secure.
A legend has lived up to its motto as: "The Town Too Tough To Die."
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