Saloons, stetsons and six-shooters

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

BENSON, AZ — The legendary town of Tombstone was our destination today, a 20-mile drive from Benson through the dusty desert landscape and a few sleepy towns and villages. There were several RV parks along the way, and as we got to the outskirts of Tombstone itself, we passed a Best Western and a Holiday Inn, so clearly lots of people like to come here. Luckily for us, we are visiting at the beginning of the busy season, so there were other tourists around, but it wasn’t over-crowded. The day was perfect; clear and sunny and not too hot!

The main street through Tombstone is a business street, but already there were buildings, such as the one in which Wyatt Earp lived, and an old rooming house, that harked back to wild west days. Allen Street, the historic part of the town, is cordoned off for pedestrians only, and boasts old wooden storefronts, boardwalks, and a couple of stagecoaches that take visitors for rides up and down the street.

We heard the clink of spurs as a cowboy strolled past us, with his leather vest, gun belt and stetson. Inside the shops, salesladies in long skirts, some with feathered hats, served customers who were looking for souvenirs or admiring artifacts from the old days.

The town got its name, we learned, from Ed Schieffelin, a rough-and-tumble early prospector who roamed into Apache country in 1877 to seek his fortune. His friends told him that all he would find in that dangerous territory was his tombstone, so when he struck it rich, he used that name for his first silver mine. His second was Lucky Cuss, because that’s what his brother called him when, penniless again, he made another attempt and found a new source of the precious metal. Mining was what brought people in and made the town grow and prosper.

Probably the most famous event to take place here was the gunfight at the OK Corral, in 1881, when Wyatt Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil and friend Doc Holliday engaged in a shoot-out with the horse-thieving Clanton brothers and the McLaury brothers that lasted a mere 30 seconds and left three dead (the cowboys) and three injured (the lawmen) and only Wyatt unhurt. Supporters of both groups laid the blame on the other, and it’s a point of discussion to this day.

We saw it all unfold before our very eyes at the very spot it first occurred, in a live re-enactment that happens every afternoon at 2! It’s a lot more comfortable for us than for the first witnesses, who were deprived of bleachers and a sun-shade from which to observe the dramatic events.

We ate soup, beans and biscuits for lunch at the Longhorn Restaurant and then visited the Tombstone Heritage Museum, a little off the beaten track, which houses authentic artifacts from the area’s history. We read a letter written in Wyatt Earp’s own hand, and looked at guns, pocket watches, saddles, and oddities from bygone days. The museum owner showed us a glass case where only a day or so earlier someone had lifted a revolver worth about $2,400 to his dismay. Thieves, unfortunately, are not only figures of the past.

The Crystal Palace was one of the local saloons, and inside was the original carved-wood bar, with wooden stools and pressed-tin ceiling where fans quietly turned above the patrons. The serving girls were authentically dressed in revealing costumes and fishnet stockings, and the owner wore a bowler hat.

The town’s newspaper, known as the Tombstone Epitaph, carries original accounts of the testimony by Wyatt Earp and other witnesses of the gunfight in reproductions of the original editions, which we picked up. It was interesting to see the old printing presses and cases where typesetters had to pick letters, one by one, and arrange them in galleys, upside down and backward, for each day’s paper. Did you know that the terms “upper case” for capital letters and “lower case” for small letters come from the fact that these letters were arranged in two sets of cases, one above the other? Val was most edified when I related that to him.

It was a very interesting day, and there are still parts of the town we didn’t get to see — including Boot Hill, where the OK Corral cowboys are buried. I expect we’ll be back again before our stay is over.