Edition n°1 | Towns and Tales of The West | WoWW 23 Week 3 | Published on Monday, 7th of July, 2025
 
Written by
Faith Hampton
Zoom on Tombstone
Tombstone is a legendary town in Arizona, United States, famous for its mythical duels and iconic figures of the Wild West. Yet its golden age lasted only a short decade before the town sank into oblivion and dust.
What story truly lies behind the meteoric rise (and equally brutal fall) of this place with a funeral name?
A slightly adventurous scout:

Tombstone was built in 1879 by the prospector Ed Schieffelin, who was then on a mission against the Chiricahuas from Fort Huachuca. He was, in fact, a civilian scout employed by the U.S. Army.
However, Ed had a rather unusual hobby: turning over the earth in search of precious metals.

From tombstone to silver stone: the birth of a mining town:

When, in 1877, Schieffelin finally found silver in the soil of this region of Cochise County, the news spread very quickly, triggering a real silver rush.
The town developed rapidly near the mine, and among the 7,000 inhabitants recorded in the early 1880s were many cowboys, businessmen, and pioneers.

Tombstone was a real anthill, teeming with life and activity. There were hundreds of saloons, 14 gambling halls, and many other places of entertainment such as theaters and libraries.

The town also enjoyed a strategic location at the crossroads of Mexican trade routes, bringing in populations of various origins, including European immigrants, Jewish communities, and even Chinese settlers. A true melting pot.

"The only rock you'll
find here will be
your tombstone."
Schieffelin fellow soldiers often mocked him, warning him about the dangers of the valleys he roamed. This is how the place was ironically named Tombstone.
The OK Corral shootout or the beginning of a Vendetta:
The population boom did not only bring positive effects to Tombstone. Indeed, the frequency of shootouts, violence, and theft skyrocketed alongside the city's expansion. To counter this phenomenon and restore order in the town, the brothers Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp, along with Doc Holliday, decided to enforce justice... not always in a legal way.

It was in this context that the famous OK Corral shootout took place, pitting the Earp brothers against a group of outlaws, including notably the Clantons and the McLaurys, accused of cattle rustling: the cowboys.

The shootout supposedly takes its name from the Old Kindersley “OK” horse corral, but in reality, it did not happen inside the corral (which was private property) but in an adjacent alleyway. On October 26, 1881, the fight ended in 30 seconds with the defeat of the cowboys, but they didn’t stop there and launched a real Vendetta by killing Morgan Earp in a billiard hall.

The town drowned in bullets and water:

This surge of violence in Tombstone drove away much of the population, but it was the torrential rains that finally ended the town’s magnificence.

In 1886, the mines began to flood, and what was once the economic heart of the region became a source of financial losses.

Tombstone was then left to its fate, abandoned as quickly as it was built, leaving behind nothing but a legend.

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Inner article coded by Brielle Dallarosa
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