Arizona, Tombstone - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - Tombstone Tour Day Two

A new neighbor pulled in today.  We’ve seen pictures of this type of RV but haven’t seen one out and about.  Not sure where they are from, but it’s not the United States.

 

 

We started out this morning with a 25 minute tour on the trolley.

 

 

 The driver gave a very informative narrative of the history of Tombstone.  He also pointed out the crossroad where 17 men were killed.  This cute little bed and breakfast next to the courthouse used to be a single family home owned by one of the more prominent prostitutes.

 

 

This house, now a cute shop, was owned by a Chinese lady of the evening who was also the local opium dealer.  The driver said when she died the whole town turned out for her funeral.  From what we’ve seen these ladies were considered vital to the town.

We had lunch at Brenda’s Chuckwagon, a very good bacon cheeseburger.  The mountains in the background are where the flooded mines and silver still lay, 1000 feet below ground.

After lunch we visited the Rose Tree Museum.  The museum is dedicated to one of the town’s pioneer families, the Macias, whose history is as old as Tombstone itself.  The star of the museum is a huge rose bush that is listed in the Guiness Book of Records as the world’s largest rose tree.  The story of the rose bush is that Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gee took lodging in the boarding house that would later become the museum in the fall of 1884.  Mrs. Gee became friends with the lady who was the manager of the boarding house.  Mrs. Gee’s family in Scotland sent her several rooted shoots of the Lady Banksia Rose for her new home.  Mrs. Gee shared one of those shoots with Mrs. Adamson, the manager of the boarding house.  They planted the shoot in the spring of 1885.  When Mrs. Macia purchased the property in 1919 Mrs. Gee told her the story of the rose.  At the present time the Lady Banksia with millions of white blossoms every April spreads over 8,000 square feet of supports and is growing larger each year.

The blooms are almost gone now.  Greg was glad the fragrance was gone also.  Some of the people in town say you can smell the roses all over town.

 

 

The rose tree isn’t the only thing of interest in the museum.  It must have taken hours to do the ironing in the 1800’s.  This is a fluting iron used to iron ruffles.  In another exhibit we saw a regular iron which weighed 22 pounds.

This coal burning stove looked to be a pretty fancy one.

This bed was shipped from New York.

I would make a very poor miner.  This silver looks like a plain old rock to me.

This copper I wouldn’t recognize either.

 

 

Greg thought this was hysterical.  It is a scolds bridle or gossip bridle, circa 1632.  It was used on women who talked too much or gossiped.  Not sure why it is in this museum, but it was interesting.

The Bird Cage Theatre opened in 1881.  It escaped all of the fires that damaged most of the rest of Tombstone at least a couple of times.  It is in its original, unrenovated state (lots of dust).  This place is just filled with memorabilia from Tombstone and I think it is worth the $10 entry fee.  I’m not going to be posting pictures because there were lots of signs posted about not posting pictures on any social media source.  Although I don’t think our blog is a biggie in the social media world, I’m not going to take any chances.  If you want to see the pictures you’ll have to track us down personally J.

 

Lillian Russell introduced the song, “Bird in a Gilded Cage”, written by Arthur J. Lamb, on the theatre’s opening night.  Lamb said the place reminded him of a bird cage with its 14 stylish balcony crib compartments where “like birds in a gilded cage beautiful scant dressed ladies with plumed feathers entertained their gentlemen customers.”

The Bird Cage Theatre was where Wyatt Earp met his third wife, Josephine, who was a lady of the evening there.

Our last stop was the Tombstone Courthouse.  As Tombstone’s population grew, so did its political power.  In 1881, the Arizona Legislature established Cochise County.  The Cochise County Courthouse was built in 1882 at a cost of nearly $50,000.  It was a symbol of law and stability in a turbulent time.  It housed the offices of the sheriff, recorder, treasurer, and the board of supervisors.  The jail was at the rear, under the courtroom.

Tombstone remained the county seat until 1929, when outvoted by a growing city of Bisbee, and the county seat moved there.  The last county office left the courthouse in 1931.  In 1959, after rehabilitation by the Tombstone Restoration Commission, the building became a historical museum operated as Arizona’s smallest state park.

The stairway up to the courtroom was impressive.

 

 

The courtroom was redone in 1904.

Allen R. English was one of the more popular attorneys of the day.  He was an alcoholic who imbibed before and during trials which evidently made the trials pretty entertaining. 

Fourth Street between Toughnut Street and Allen Street was labeled “Rotten Row” because of all of the attorney offices located there.

This is a recreation of the gallows that were located just outside the courthouse.  The original was burned in 1912 when the state took over the responsibility for executions.