Arizona Place Names
Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, founded in 1879 in what was then the Arizona Territory. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the town is 1,569, a decline from its early years when its population was larger than San Francisco's.

History

In the summer of 1877 prospector Ed Schieffelin was working the hills east of the San Pedro River in the southeast portion of the Arizona Territory, when he came across a vein of very rich silver ore in a high plateau called Goose Flats. 

When Schieffelin filed his mining claim, he named it the "Tombstone" in honor of the irony of the situation. He had told a soldier that he was out collecting rocks, and been told that the only type of rock he was likely to find prospecting among the waterless hills and warring Apaches of the area, would be his tombstone.

Tombstone town was founded in 1879, taking its name from the mining claim, and soon became a boomtown. Fueled by mine wealth, Tombstone was a city of 1000 by the beginning of 1881, and within another year Tombstone had become the county seat of a new county (Cochise County) with a population between 5,000 and 15,000, and services including refrigeration (with ice cream and later even ice skating), running water, telegraph and limited telephone service. Capitalists and businessmen moved in from the Eastern U.S. Mining was carried out by immigrants from Cornwall and Europe. An extensive service industry (laundry, construction, restaurants, fine hotels, etc.) was provided by Chinese and other immigrants.

Unfortunately, without railroad access, during this time the increasingly sophisticated Tombstone was also relatively isolated in the middle of desert federal territory which remained unpopulated and wild. In these circumstances, Tombstone and its surrounding countryside also became known as one of the deadliest regions in the West.

In and near Tombstone, uncivilized southern gangs from the surrounding countryside, known as "Cowboys", were at odds with the northern capitalists and immigrant miners who ran the city and mines. On October 26, 1881 this situation famously exploded in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and a continued family and political feud (such as the Earp vendetta ride) which provided homicides into 1882.

As a result of relative lack of water and quick wooden construction, Tombstone experienced major fires in 1881 and May, 1882; the second fire being particularly destructive and signaling the end of the classic old boomtown mining city. After the mid-1880's when the silver mines had been tapped out and became flooded with deep groundwater, Tombstone declined.

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Tourism

Tombstone nearly became a ghost town after the decline of silver mining there, saved for many years only by its status as the Cochise County seat. Even the county seat was later moved by popular vote to nearby Bisbee in 1929 (Bisbee population was fed by later copper mining). However, the classic Cochise County Courthouse and adjacent gallows yard in Tombstone is preserved as a museum.

Tombstone is home to perhaps the most famous Boot Hill graveyard of the Old West. Buried at the site are various victims of violence and disease in Tombstone's early years, including those from the O.K. Corral. Boot Hill (also known as the old city cemetery) was also the destination for bad-men and those lynched or legally hanged in Tombstone.

The lot in which the historic gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 started is also preserved, but this has been walled off, and admission is charged. However, since much of this street fight occurred in Tombstone's Fremont Street (modern Highway 80), much of this site is also viewable without admission charge.

Visitors interested in less violent history may enjoy the world's largest rosebush (according to Guinness), planted in Tombstone in 1885, and doing very well since then in the sunny climate. This Lady Banksia rose now covers 8,000 square feet of the roof on an inn, and has a 12 foot circumference trunk.

Currently, tourism and western memorabilia are the main commercial enterprises; a July 2005 CNN article notes that Tombstone receives approximately 450,000 tourist visitors each year. This is about 300 tourists/year for each permanent resident. In contrast to its heyday, when it featured saloons open 24 hours and numerous houses of prostitution, Tombstone is now a staid community with few businesses open late.

The town's focus on tourism has threatened the town's designation as a National Historic District, a designation it earned in 1961 as "one of the best preserved specimens of the rugged frontier town of the 1870s and '80s." 

In 2004, the National Park Service (NPS) declared the designation threatened, seeking to work with the community to develop an appropriate stewardship program. The inappropriate alterations to the district cited by the NPS include:

• Placing "historic" dates on new buildings
• Failing to distinguish new construction from historic structures
• Covering authentic historic elevations with inappropriate materials
• Replacing historic features instead of repairing them
• Replacing missing historic features with conjectural and unsubstantiated materials
• Building incompatible additions to existing historic structures and new incompatible buildings within the historic district
• Using illuminated signage, including blinking lights surrounding historic signs
• Installing hitching rails and Spanish tile-covered store porches when such architectural features never existed within Tombstone

Also, the dirt roads of the city have been paved, which many perceive as a violation of the town's historic status.

As of Jan, 2006, the Tombstone Restoration Committee is hard at work restoring much of the historical buildings and town. The roads have been un-paved and are once again dirt.