Let's take a tour of Tombstone!
This probably won't come as much of a surprise to you, but Tombstone is one of my favorite places. I've taken many pictures over the years, and somehow lost most of them. So...I just went, right before Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, 2024, and I wanted to show you some pictures. I also learned that they have a LOT of Christmas activities...Victorian caroling, even a Christmas Ball at Schiefflin Hall (which I would LOVE to see! It wasn't open when I was there--I'd love to see inside!).
So just for fun, I want to post some of my pics, and a couple for Christmas. Most of them have links to some historical information, which I always find fun, from the clothes they wore, the dolls they played with, what they did for fun and more! I hope you enjoy the inside peek!
~Cindy
Christmas in Tombstone
The Victorian carolers.
A docent at the County Courthouse dressed for Christmas.
Likely a pretty bumpy ride!
Tombstone Then and Now
Allen Street, then.
Interesting sign for a bath!
Allen Street, now.
Inside of the Oriental Saloon. The Occidental is fashioned after this!
A very well-stocked drug store.
A prominent butcher in town. This is directly across from Schiefflin Hall, and my sister and I stood exactly there, trying to see in the windows! (It's closed now).
And the clothes!
Lots of beautiful clothes.
I frequently wonder what it would be like to go out dressed like this! Was it uncomfortable? Probably.
Gorgeous! I wasn't sure if it was an everyday dress or for something special.
I also imagine it took quite a bit of work to keep things together! If you sew, like I love to, you'll know what these are!
And there were lots of ice cream socials and bands that played at the bandstand in City Park. Wyatt Earp was said to be particularly fond of ice cream. (Seems weird that they had it!)
Banjos were very popular.
Different Kinds of Entertainment
Lots of famous people have been to Big Nose Kate's Saloon. She had a very long history with Doc Holliday. You can read more about that here:
Dancing saloon girls at Big Nose Kate's. Yes, they randomly stop serving and dance. Kind of funny and a bit of a spectacle. At one time this building was a hotel, with a second floor dining, and the tallest building between St. Louis and San Francisco.
The bar at Big Nose Kate's. This is the most commercial and least historically accurate place in Tombstone. Fun, though! My brother-in-law and I love their onion rings, though, so we always go. Here's a video:
This is the outside of Wyatt Earp's Oriental Saloon. It's now a drug store, but you can read more about it below.
This is the Bird Cage theater. It was open 24/7/365 for years. It also had the longest running poker game downstairs--it lasted for 8 years! It's been revamped and is now a really interesting museum...and it gives haunted night tours. Yikes!
This is what the inside looked like back then. All those benches for miners to watch the vaudeville acts, and the boxes up above for "special" guests. I've attached a video of what it looks like now but be warned, the person doing it is not a professional and if you're prone to motion sickness, maybe pass on this. But it goes downstairs and shows the room where the poker game took place.
One of the performers at the Bird Cage, Eddie Foy, became famous preforming his acts in mining towns. He says that he didn't find anything challenging, but the link below talks about the bullet holes in the wall and has some great pictures.
Lotta Crabtree was a favorite performer, in Tombstone and across the country. In the 1880s, she was earning over $5,000 a week! That would be $154,653.43 in today's dollars. Wow, she was popular!
A costume worn at the Bird Cage. As an aside, what surprised me most about being inside the theater was how SMALL it is. I can't imagine that many people in there. Were humans smaller then? I never know!
Boothill Graveyard
On to Boot Hill Cemetery! There are more than 250 graves here, all real. It's fascinating. People died from many things: Suicide, childbirth (overdose of chloroform), shooting, drowning, pneumonia, smallpox--you name it! Read about all of them below!
This is the grave of a person lynched in Tombstone. He was part of the gang on the right's planning of a robbery, but he wasn't there at the time and they let him off. Tombstone residents had other ideas.
The graves of the men hung at the courthouse. They were the only people officially hung in Tombstone. Better picture of their headstone and the story below! They killed several people during a robbery in nearby Bisbee. There is a grave of another poor soul who was hung by accident (He legally bought a horse but apparently no one believed him).
Between 400 and 500 Chinese people lived in Tombstone in their own area which was called Hoptown, at the west end of Allen Street. This is the grave of Mrs. Ah Lum (China Mary) who was said to run the town. Her grave was one of the fanciest! Read more about her below.
This grave, right next to China Mary, was that of Quong Kee, a well-known and well-respected Chinese man in Tombstone. He ran the Can Can restaurant as well as several other restaurants, laundries and other businesses. Read more about him and China Mary below. Lovely picture of Mary. (They were not related).
The hearse in Tombstone. After the death of a very popular brothel madame, over 1,000 people, miners and bankers, male and female alike, followed the hearse on foot to Foothill Cemetery. Dutch Annie helped many people, and her charity was renowned.
Chinese people were very involved in Tombstone. This bill and receipt is to Hong Kong. He was paid for providing sixty meals for prisoners working on the streets.
This is the wok used by Quong Kee!
The interior of Quong Kee's very fancy Can Can restaurant where he sold steaks and ham alongside Chinese to famous and ordinary diners every day.
Prior to 1883, smoking opium and opium dens was legal, licensed and taxed, in Tombstone. After that, they still ran, but there were also $10 bounties for informants about it. From what I read, not many were turned in, and they continued.
I personally (and quite happily) know little to nothing about smoking opium, but they had several displays with the paraphernalia from the opium dens. This is a picture of two opium pipes.
This is an opium lamp, and from my brief research, opium was used in general for toothaches (pain relief in general) and as a stimulant for people going to work in the mines.
In exploring the displays and researching, it became clear that even these questionable establishments were licensed and taxed.
In addition to being taxed by the city, licenses were required for virtually everything. This is a city license issued to Emma Parker to operate a House of Ill Fame. She paid $4.30 which would be about $120.00 today--and for only 13 days! Signed by Sheriff Johnny Behan.
This license for "gaming" issued to Ike Isaacs was for $30.00, about $900.00 in today's dollars. It's signed by Virgil Earp, who was both a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal.
Running a boarding house would cost $50, apparently. Equivalent of $1500 today. These businesses must been very profitable. All of them!
And then there were taxes. This for being allowed to sell tobacco.
And it appears that taxes weren't popular even then. Residents also had to pay school taxes (which I wrote about in The Teacher).
I'm sure it takes a lot of money to run a big town like this! And it was very expensive for residents.
The famous (and infamous) courtroom where many trials were conducted.
Thanks to Johnny Behan (who you might recognize from the Tombstone movie that I've never seen), not much of that tax money got where it was supposed to go. He was the leader of the 10% Ring, who skimmed off a lot of money. This is what I wrote about in The Reporter, except Johnny Behan was replaced with the mayor.
And if you want to see what I fall into when I'm researching things about Tombstone (I have plans for Mrs. Allen and Beau Archer!) you can read copies of the Tombstone Epitaph, the paper Pepper Archer works for. I have fallen into these things for HOURS and HOURS. I love the ads, I love the articles--they sound so strange to me now, but this was daily life in Tombstone. Here's the paper from June 10, 1882. Zoom in or turn the page to see what they were really up to!
And then there were taxes. This for being allowed to sell tobacco.
And it appears that taxes weren't popular even then. Residents also had to pay school taxes (which I wrote about in The Teacher).
And I will leave you with...
The world's largest rose tree! There is no way to understand the size of this unless you're there, but I wanted to show you a picture. It's HUGE. And I wrote about it, too. A start was brought to someone in Tombstone, and it grew and grew...and grew. Read more about it below! And watch their short video at the bottom to get a sense of the size and scale of this beautiful tree.
Thanks for joining me on a tour of Tombstone! If there's anything you'd like me to investigate, let me know! I'd love to do it, and thanks for reading.
~Cindy