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Tombstone: Too Tough To Die

by Janice Hendricks

Tombstone Arizona has been titled “The Town Too Tough To Die” and for good reason as many things have worked against this town still standing. A town was formed around the area known as Goose Flats shortly after prospector and scout Ed Schieffelin discovered a wealth of silver in this area around 1877. He had been warned of only finding his ‘tombstone’ while searching for his treasure and thinking this an appropriate name for this new town site the location soon become known as Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Well that word can bring to mind thoughts of death perhaps thinking of the marker set upon a gravesite. Would the name be a premonition of sorts as many similar towns that sprung up over a mine claim had and would die

The late 1880′s and up to the turn of the century found the silver mining industry failing as efforts to remove the seeping water that found its way into each mineshaft failed. Miners were disgruntled and soon found new employment in the copper mines of Bisbee and other new mining towns. Families were moving away and the town was soon becoming its predetermined status, a ghost town. In 1929 a vote brought about yet another major change for this town. Bisbee was now to be the new county seat. All official offices were to be relocated some 25 miles away creating still another link to the town’s preordained eventual death. Was not the name Tombstone becoming more and more appropriate for a dead town?

And yet, many residents continued to stay on here. Homes were still occupied and residents still met at the town hall for the political banter. Flour and coffee as well as other dry goods would have been purchased from the local market perhaps located on Allen Street. The ladies auxiliaries would have met and box lunch socials would have been prepared and anticipated. The town did not die.

Services were needed to carry on a life in Tombstone that could sustain its growing population. Movie theaters, soda fountains, drug stores, dry cleaners, lumber and hardware stores and markets were what occupied the buildings on Allen Street. Tombstone Union High School had been built where once cribs of prostitution occupied the east end of Allen Street. Students from all around Cochise County were educated here and prepared for perhaps college life in the big city of Tempe, Arizona.

http://www.tombstonetimes.com/stories/tootough.html