Three days in Arizona
Tombstone: Travelling back in the wild west time?
“Of all the films portraying the town of Tombstone, Arizona, the 1993 movie Tombstone has been praised for being the most historically accurate.”
The second day we drove from Scottsdale to Tombstone and symbolically, we entered the historic city exactly at 11:59 AM.
We thought it will be a short courteous visit of the old western city. Interestingly, the first contact was the scene with 4 men in long black coats standing in the middle of dusty Allen street. We rushed to see what’s happening, but they already left. I knew what rolls they were playing, but we had just a little bit of knowledge how the entire program works here.
Later on we found that fifteen minutes before the OK corral gunfight show time, four men acting as Earp brothers and Doc Holiday, are making their presence at the street to entertain visitors as well as posing in front of their cameras. The twelve noon was the show time we couldn’t make.
About Tombstone
Tombstone is a historic city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, founded in 1879 by prospector Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It became one of the last boomtowns in the American frontier.
The town grew significantly into the mid-1880s as the local minesproduced $40 to $85 million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in Arizona. Within two years of its founding, although far distant from any other metropolitan area, Tombstone had a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, two banks, three newspapers, and an ice cream parlor, alongside 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, and numerous dance halls and brothels.
Its population grew from 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years. It is best known as the site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corraland presently draws most of its revenue from tourism.
By entering Allen Street I felt like I stepped back into the rough and tough days of the wild west in 1880s. Cowboys and cowgirls were mingling around the dusty street under the hot Arizona sun, blending present and past time.
As a teenager, I read several western novels and of course, loved to watch western movies and admire the heroes who were generally good guys. Who didn’t? However, standing here on this street and in this town where legends like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday lived their lives, it turned the imagination into reality.
There were several wagons “parked” on both sides of the street and suddenly a stagecoach approached on our left pulled by two beautiful tall horses.
As we continued walking down Allen street, it started to look more and more realistic. In comparison, when visiting Rome you can also see magnificent old historic monuments, but here you can see real people dressing and acting like those who lived there back in 1880-s.
Anyway, the next OK corral show was at 2 pm, so we had almost 2 hours to wonder around and check on other cheduled entertainments.
Trying to kill the time between two shows we were looking for a nearby bar, which in Tombstone translates to a saloon. There were several of them along the street, but shortly we ended up in the front of the Oriental saloon & theatre.
We didn’t know much about it either, but two saloon girls and few cowboys were announcing the next saloon gunfight show starting in 15 minutes. Why not? It was only $10 per person for 25 minutes show in fully air conditioned saloon.
We learned that this saloon was restored to the original version from 1880-s, where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday used to spend the most of their time at gambling tables or around the bar. Although Wyatt was a deputy marshal in Tombstone he was a gambler as well.
During the wild west time, this was one of the best and most famous bars all the way from southern Arizona Mexican border to San Francisco.
The consumption of whiskey and liquor had an involvment in a great percentage of pistol to pistol confrontations in town squares. We were told that in the intersection in front of this saloon, around 70 men were killed in gunfights throughout several years.
In spite of the common understanding that “duels” are the best way to settle things right, I would imagine that Tombstone’s Court House had a lot of cases to deal with during that time.
The legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral
It was getting close to 2 pm and another chance to see the Magnificent Four walking down the street before the show time. The nearby OK Corral with the stage for this show was also restored to the original version from 1880-s.
These are a few images of the introductory ambient before entering the stage....
“While four men were walking down the dusty Fremont Street, around the corner, in a narrow vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral, six cowboys were waited. In a fateful thirty seconds, nearly thirty shots were fired at close range.”
The stage where the O.K. Corral gunfight show takes a place....
“The gunbattle between the Earps, lead by Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and their friend Doc Holliday against the Clanton−McLaury gang left Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers dead and Virgil, Morgan, and Doc wounded.”
Although not everyone agrees, “today this event is considered as a legendary example of Western vigilante justice, where lawmen preserving the peace killed cattle rustlers suspected of robbing a Wells Fargo stagecoach.”
This 30-second shootout established Wyatt Earp’s role as a fearless lawman in the American Old West and the legend of the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” in the public consciousness.
The End!