Tombstone and Boot Hill

As our parting shot from St David we took a trip to old Tombstone and Boot Hill.  Tombstone is the town where the shootout at the OK Corral occurred in 1881 when the Clantons and the Earps were competing for control of the town.

The Clanton gang always wore red.  These two are
obviously Clanton cohorts.

The main street is blocked off from traffic but you can still drive and park along the side streets.  The town is totally commercialized with several place offering exhibitions of the gun fights that occurred all too often in old Tombstone.  There are more museums than you can count and they charge from $3-$10 per person.  The OK Corral where the gun fight that made the town famous occurred charges $10 but it includes access to the OK Corral, the museum next door and a copy of the Tombstone newspaper that recorded the events of that day.

The Butterfield Stage runs in town if you want to take a ride in a stage coach.  Buy your ticket at the Butterfield Stage ticket  office...

 ...and hop aboard for a short ride around town.

There are lots of little shops selling souvenirs for you to take home.

The Good Enough Mine offers mine tours,

and the Historic Cochise County Courthouse is also a museum.

My favorite activity, however, was the visit to the Boot Hill Cemetery on the edge of town.  More than any of the re-enactments in old Tombstone, a visit to Boot Hill is a lesson in the character and difficulties of living in the old west.  Among the citizens buried here are judges and marshals, outlaws, Indians, and Chinese.  The victims of crime and the criminals are buried near one another.  Suicides, murders and illnesses removed Tombstones residents from the town and place them there in Boot Hill.  A sampling of the residents gives testimony to the nature of life here in the 1880s.

The victims of the OK Corral shootout are all buried together.

John Heath, a man who planned a robbery in the nearby town of Bisbee, was hauled out of the jail and hanged from a telegraph pole just west of the courthouse.  His gang was hanged together 17 days later on a single gallows after having been convicted of killing several people during the robbery.  Justice was swift in Tombstone. 

For a complete picture of the Boot Hill cemetery go to the Boot Hill Graveyard website.  There you will find a list of the residents of Boot HIll and how they died.  People like Geo. Johnson, hanged by mistake after he innocently bought a stolen horse and suffered the consequences.

"Here lies George Johnson, 

Hanged by mistake, 1882.

He was right, 

we was wrong, 

but we strung him up 

and now he's gone."

Or Lester Moore

Lester Moore

"Here lies Lester Moore,

Four slugs from a .44,

No Les, no more."

Moore was a Wells Fargo agent at Naco and had a dispute with a man over a package.

Both died. 

or Johnnie Wilson

"Johnnie Wilson Shot by King"

Two gunmen's discussion of the fastest way to draw, ended here.

One of the surprises in the cemetery is a the Jewish Graveyard and Memorial.  There are no marked graves here but a very nice memorial has been erected "Dedicated to the Jewish Pioneers and Their Indian Friends".

The Jewish Memorial

A most interesting place to visit is Boot Hill Cemetery.  You can almost feel the tension of the "town too tough to die."

         -Kent