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.

 

Arizona, Tombstone - Monday, April 27, 2015 - Tombstone Tour Day One

We are staying at the Wells Fargo RV Park for a couple of days.

 

 

Tombstone reached its pinnacle of riches and then faded all within the short span of eight years.  Ed Schieffelin prospected the nearby hills in 1877.  Friends from Fort Huachuca told him the only thing he would ever find out there was his tombstone.  Instead he found silver, lots of it.

 

 

Miners flocked to the area and built a shantytown on the closest level space to the mines, then known as Goose Flats.  They soon changed the name to Tombstone remembering the prophecy given to Schieffelin. 

In 1881 the population had reached 10,000 rivaling both Tucson (county seat) and Prescott (territorial capital).  This year the Earp and Clanton feud ended in the famous gunfight near the OK Corral.  The first of at least a couple of disastrous fires burned out much of the infant town, but it was immediately rebuilt.

When water began to seep into the shafts, pumps were installed, but the mines soon flooded to the point that they couldn’t be worked.  By 1886, Tombstone’s heyday was over, but not before $37,000,000 worth of silver had been taken from the mines.

Granted today there is a lot of tourist hype, doodads and t-shirts.  But, if you can look beyond that there is a lot of history here too.

Lots of movies have been made about Tombstone.  This one is probably the most recent.

 

This hand painted movie poster is a rare one from 1939 (I think I got the date right).

We strolled through town to get a feel for what was available.  Ran across these cowboys keeping the town safe.

This is a view down one side of the boardwalk that goes down Allen Street, the main street in town.

This area is blocked off to modern day vehicles.  The stagecoach runs regularly.

This lightweight buggy was one that could have been rented from the OK Corral to get around town and the nearby countryside.

I’m sure the Harley shop isn’t an original, but we checked it out anyway.

 

If you are into western wear for square dancing or just because you like it, this is the place to come.

 

I liked the sign out front.

 

Some of the interesting items we spotted in a museum today.  The saddle ridden by Kurt Russell in his role as Wyatt Earp in the movie “Tombstone”.

A 1879 hearse with an array of embalming tools inside.  The tools made me squeamish, but I thought the hearse was beautiful.

I didn’t realize buggies had foot warmers.  I’m sure they must have been for the more affluent.  Hot coals were placed in the warmers for passenger comfort.  However, I guess when they hit really rough roads the coals could spill out making for an exciting ride.

 

 

These are views of the OK Corral. 

 

 

The gunfight at the OK Corral didn’t actually happen in the Corral, just near it.  The bad guys, cowboys Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy and Ike Clanton walked through the corral to Fremont Street.  The actual gunfight happened three lots west of the corral.  This information is documented by a map drawn by Wyatt Earp in 1924 showing the location of those involved. 

The gunfight happened on October 26, 1881 next to Fly’s Photography Studio on Fremont Street.

This is part of a map showing the location of mines around Tombstone.  Note the red Tombstone and Lucky Cuss mines, they were the first in the area.

This is some of the equipment that was used in the mines.

 

 

We attended a live reenactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral which was pretty entertaining.

 

These are the actors portraying the Earp brothers.

 

 

We had lunch at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.  I understand that she was called Big Nose not because her nose was big but because she was always sticking it into everyone else’s business.  She was supposedly the first prostitute to show up in the Arizona territory, but her real claim to fame was that she was Doc Holliday’s girlfriend.

 

 

 

 

This little guy and mom were strolling down Allen Street.  The little one is just seven days old.

 

Schieffelin Hall was built in 1882 so that touring actors would have a place to bring some culture to Tombstone.  It has also housed the King Solomon Territorial Masonic Lodge for well over 100 years now.  It and the newspaper office were saved from destruction in one of the fires that destroyed most of Tombstone by dynamiting some other nearby buildings to provide a fire break.  It is reputed to be the largest adobe building in the U.S.

 

 

Among the historical buildings still standing is St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the oldest Protestant church building in Arizona.  It still stands on its original site and holds weekly services.

The church was completed in 1882 at a cost of $5,000.  The stained glass windows are the original ones imported from Belgium.  I was hoping the church would be open so we could see the windows from the inside.

I don’t know whether or not the door is original, but it is beautiful.

The Tombstone Epitaph newspaper was founded by John Clum, May 1, 1880 and still stands.  This was the original printing press.

Greg said he learned typesetting in printing class using this same type of process.  We agreed that is about as useful to him now as the shorthand I worked so hard to conquer.

This photograph taken by Clum in 1884, is the first known photo of Geronimo.

This caught our eye as a replacement for our failing good luck plant.

I also thought this guy would be a nice addition to the decorative rock trays I usually have on the dash when we are parked.  I haven’t put them out right now since this is just a short stop.