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USA - ARIZONA - TOMBSTONE : A TOWN TOO TOUGH TO DIE by Ursula & Eldrid Retief   There’s the Tombstone of legend where the final arbiter of every dispute was the six-gun, a town filled with steely-eyed gun-slingers and gaudy dancehall girls, and of shootouts at the OK Corral.Then there was the real Tombstone, which almost, but not quite, lived up to the legend. You could see John P. Clum, postmaster, editor and first mayor of Tombstone, shaking his head in disbelief as he wrote: " ...... it was not uncommon for a man to bury his wife in the morning, kill a man before noon, and marry another woman before sundown."
By late 1881, there were over 5,000 people in Tombstone and more gambling houses, saloons and a bigger "boothill" and "red light" district than any town in the southwest. That year 110 saloon licenses were sold and there were 14 dance halls. Some of them never closed. Boothill Graveyard is still there at the edge of town where the good and the bad rest together – outlaws and their victims, one man who was lynched, and five men who were legally hanged on one scaffold and buried in one grave. Buried there too, are those from the more refined elements of early-day Tombstone society. Tombstone’s Boothill is the original by that name, and all other western towns followed by naming their burial places "boothill". One epitaph reads "M.E. Kellog 1882. Died a natural death", suggesting that his manner of death was so unusual that it needed to be put on his marker, unlike those who died unexpectedly and were buried with their boots on. Sharing the burial place are Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury. Their tombstone reads: "Murdered in the streets of Tombstone 1881." The reference of course was to the shootout at the OK Corral, immortalized in western folklore and loved by fiction writers and historical novelists. "In fact, it didn’t take place at the OK Corral ... it was at a vacant lot nearby," Ben T. Traywick, of Tombstone told us. As Wyatt himself repeatedly said: "It was a street fight between my brothers and Doc and myself and those who believed they could shoot down the Earps." As the Tombstone Epitaph reported in its issue of October 27, 1881 under the headlines "Yesterday’s Tragedy at the OK Corral – Three Men Hurled into Eternity in the Duration of a Moment": "Stormy as were the early days of Tombstone, nothing ever occurred equal to the event of yesterday". That was the afternoon when the three Earps (Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil) and a friend, Doc Holliday, met in the middle of Fourth Street and slowly walked down to Fremont towards Montgomery’s OK Corral to their destinies and into the bloody pages of Tombstone history. The shootout lasted no more than 30 seconds. When the gunsmoke cleared, three men were dead and two others seriously wounded. It was over so quickly that no witness could say exactly what happened and arguments still rage today about the sequence of events. Ben Traywick makes a compelling case for his argument that neither side expected or was prepared for a gunfight. Had they expected a blazing gun-battle, both sides would have brought along other gunmen. Ike Clanton didn’t even have a gun. Wyatt Earp actually put his gun back in his overcoat pocket when he was told the cowboys had been disarmed. Virgil was holding a cane in his gunhand when the confrontation started. The Earps and Holliday walked to within two meters of the cowboys, far too close for a gunfight involving eight people. As Ben says in one of his books: "However, if they intended to pistol-whip the cowboys, one step and a gun barrel would have been the right distance!" That's probably what the Earps intended to do. Nor did Wyatt Earp shoot Ike Clanton when he had the chance. Clanton ran away. Finally he asks: "Why would nine supposedly sane men (Billy the Kid Claiborne was still present) crowd themselves and two horses into such a small space, then start shooting at each other?" Ben himself would have been right at home among the characters of the old Tombstone. A retired chemical engineer, he has spent 30 years collecting material about Tombstone and his home (Red Marie’s Bookshop, named for his wife) is a treasurehouse of western memorabilia. He is officially recognized as the town’s historian: "I saw how many lies had been told, so I set out to put the record straight." And he has – in a series of nine minutely-researched and documented books of Tombstone’s turbulent days. His research has laid to rest some of the myths. For instance, legend has it that, as he lay dying, Billy Clanton called: "Take off my boots. I promised my mother I wouldn’t die with my boots on." In fact, he was four years old when his mother died. Just by the way, the Earps and Doc Holliday are always pictured as dark-eyed, dark-haired. Ben said they were all blonde and all blue-eyed. Big Nose Kate Saloon, on the site of the original Grand Hotel, offers a profile of its namesake, reportedly Tombstone's first prostitute. But Big Nose Kate’s biggest claim to fame was the fact that she was also Doc Holliday's girlfriend. Kate had saved Holliday from jail in Fort Griffin, Texas, by breaking him out of jail. On October 25, 1881, the night before Gunfight at the OK Corral, the Clantons and the McLaurys were guests here. In 1881 a fire burned out much of the infant town. A bartender was inspecting a barrel of bad whiskey when his lighted cigar ignited the escaping gas. In less than three minutes, the flames spread to adjoining buildings with "a velocity equalled only to a burning prairie in a gale". By the end of the day 66 businesses had been reduced to ashes. The town was immediately rebuilt. Then, with over $37-million worth of silver having been taken from the mines, water began to seep into the shafts. Pumps were installed, but the mines were soon flooded and could not be worked. By 1886, Tombstone’s heyday was over. The Tombstone of today wears the slogan "The Town Too Tough To Die" like a badge of honor. It makes the most of its past and much of the rollicking old town is still here, but it’s not a stage-prop town. It’s an authentic 1880 Western Town, a rare, living museum. Walking down the boardwalk, visitors will see buildings built in the boomtown days and many historically oriented attractions.
The Bird Cage was the most famous honkytonk in America between 1881 and 1889. The New York Times said it was the "wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast". It was the site of 16 gunfights, and the 140 bullet holes that riddle its walls and ceilings are mute evidence of these happenings. In 1934 the Bird Cage became a Historic Landmark of the America West and it is now open as a museum. It’s not all bloodletting in Tombstone. There’s the world’s largest rose bush in the Rose Tree Inn, covering 8,000 square feet and many couples are still married standing beneath its fragrant blooms. To commemorate its annual blooming, Tombstone holds the Rose Tree Festival in April. It sure beats the hell out of gunsmoke. Photo: courtesy Richard Cummins© Metropolitan Tucson CVB
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