Daily Archives: March 22, 2011
Trains and Tombstones . . .
First off we have a new Landon photo taken while he was Skyping with his other grandmother in OK.
This morning started really early, (Hey, for me, 7am is EARLY) but at least we had time for coffee. And splitting one of Miss Terry’s fabulous cinnamon buns.
It was really nice outside this morning since the winds had died down, and the light, but steady, rain all night had finally settled the dust. And it looks to be nice for the next several days with highs in the low 70’s and lows in the low 40’s.
Really nice.
About 9am Nick Russell, his wife Terry, and Jan and I headed out to Tombstone, AZ, “The Town Too Tough To Die”, about 55 miles away.
The first 25 took us east on I-10 to Benson where we got on State Road 80, toward Tombstone.
Passing through Benson, we took a loop around the Escapees SKP park located on the outskirts of the town. This park is a co-op park that allows the owners to build structures on their lots next to their RV pads. And some get even more involved.
This owner build his own outdoor western-themed train layout. I told Jan this makes me want to reconsider buying a lot in a park somewhere. If I weren’t RVing fulltime I’d have a big train layout like I did as a kid.
Nearing Tombstone, Nick took us on a tour of an Arizona ghost town called Fairbank. Founded in 1881, it prospered from being the nearest railroad station to the bustling city of Tombstone, one of the largest cities in the western US at the time.
But a combination of floods and droughts gradually killed off the town, although there were a few remaining residents until the 1970’s when the last of the buildings were condemned.
Today the area is owned by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and is open to the public.
Leaving Fairbank, it was only a few minutes further down the road to Tombstone. And just about the first thing you see coming into town is Tombstone’s legendary Boot Hill. And it was our first place to stop.
Apparently only about 200 of the 300 graves here are identified, due to some buried without grave markers, and some markers lost. But the ones that remain are very interesting.
Some of the first graves you find are the result of the (in)famous Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury were killed in a shootout with Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. The two other initial participants, Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran when the shooting started.
The feud between the Earps and the Clanton gang continued for another six months, resulting in the death of Morgan Earp and the severe wounding of Virgil. Finally in April 1882 the Earps left the Arizona Territory for Colorado.
Later, after serving as a film consultant for silent cowboy moves, and also as a deputy sheriff, Wyatt Earp died in January 1929 at the age of 80 in his small apartment in Los Angeles.
On a Trivial Pursuit note, his friend Bat Masterson, died in New York City at his desk at the New York Morning Telegraph newspaper where he was head sports editor. A big change from a gunfighter/lawman in the Old West.
The gallows still stand at the old Cochise County Courthouse, and some days they got a real workout.
In this case, 5 in one day.
It’s good that they clarified they hung these guys ‘legally’, caused this guy was just lynched outright.
And in one of those ‘Oops. Sorry ‘bout that’ moments, this poor soul was done in by mistake.
Oh, well.
After driving around Tombstone, and agreeing with Nick and Terry that the place had been turned into a complete tourist trap, we pressed on to Bisbee, AZ.
Our first stop was lunch at the Bisbee Grille, a place that got great reviews, but Nick wasn’t as enamored of it as we were.
Bisbee is a quaint little town scattered up and down the mountain side, with a lot of neat shops and stores. It has a real artist’s colony feel to it.
This post is starting to run long so I’ll finish up the rest of our trip tomorrow.
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Thought for the Day:
If rebooting fails, hit it with a hammer.
asdf
