Current Day Tombstone, AZ

Isn’t this cool! It looks like a picture from an old west movie set, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. This is the actual main street of Tombstone today. The only main street….they don’t have one lined with modern shops, don’t have a grocery store. One or two gas stations with a mini mart, and a small market where you can pick up the basics, but otherwise all businesses are located on the old frontier style Allen Street. Many of them were operating back in the early 1800’s and still are today. I’m posting a few pictures from our trip there last week.

The original County Courthouse that served the town and county for many years is now an operating museum. The interior of the courtroom is just as it was over one-hundred years ago.

We watched a video about a trial that took place here in the mid 1880’s with a reenactment. It dealt with a dispute over water rights, and a
rancher who blew the dam that was placed on another ranchers property for watering his stock. The water rushed downstream and two little girls were drowned as they played in the stream. So much tragedy during this time period. We visited Boot Hill cemetery and about 70% of the people buried there were shot, hanged, killed by Indians, stabbed, or otherwise murdered. A few said they died of an accident or illness, but it was amazing the number of violent deaths during that time period.

Several of the original buildings from the early 1880’s are still standing, besides the courthouse. Others are, in order as shown below:

The Bird Cage Theater where many musicals, theater productions and rowdy comic actors and singers performed. There are said to be at least 140 bullet holes in the interior walls of the building. Doc Holliday got into a shooting scrape with another man, along with many others. The original piano (brought in by mule team) is still where it was placed when it arrived, as well as the Faro table, the gallery boxes on the second floor, and the dance hall girls’ rooms below.