According to the town website, Ed Schieffelin left Camp Huachuca to prospect in the Arizona mountains. His friends thought soldiering was safer and warned him that all he'd end up with was his tombstone. In 1877, though, he staked his first silver claim and named it the Tombstone. His success brought a flood of people hoping to strike it rich, and they honored his strike by naming their boomtown after his mine. For a lot of people, the name wasn't so auspicious. Tombstone is still famous for two things: The gunfight at the OK Corral between the Earps and the Clantons and Boot Hill, where so many of its citizens went to an early grave.

We arrived along with lots of other tourists for the annual Celebration of Tombstone Days.

The main street is lined with various saloons and restaurants as well as gift shops. It's very picturesque.

A lot of people were in period dress. Seeing them getting out of a pick up or talking to someone in modern clothes was a little weird.

The most famous and notorious establishment in the West was the Bird cage, also called the Bird Cage Opera House Saloon. It was originally called the Elite Theater, and while it did have entertainment on stage, it was also a brothel and gambling house. To maximize space, the "ladies of the evening" entertained their callers in one of the 14 cribs that were suspended from the ceiling, 7 on each side. Just after it opened, Eddie Foy, a noted vaudevillian, and Arthur Lamb were discussing the building. Foy thought the room looked like a coffin because it was so long and narrow, but Lamb said it reminded him of a bird cage with the scantily-clad girls and the feathers in their hair. With their cribs, he remarked, "They are like birds in a gilded cage." He thought that might be a good song title, and he began fiddling with it, finally producing one of the most famous songs of the day, She's Only A Bird In A Gilded Cage." He gave it to a young girl singing that night. The crowd loved it and so did the owner, who immediately changed the name to the Bird Cage and so it was known from then on. The young girl's career was also launched and she went on to fame and fortune as Lillian Russel, making the song one of the most popular of the 19th century.

The O.K. Corral wasn't the site of the famous gunfight. It actually happened nearby in an alley on Fremont Street between Fly's Photo Gallery and Jersey's Livery Stable. In less than a minute, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton of the Clanton Gang were dead and Doc Holliday, Morgan and Virgil Earp were wounded.

Today Tombstone is a place for tourists, but in the late 1800s, it had a population of between 15 and 20 thousand and was the fastest growing city between St. Louis and San Francisco. It had over a hundred saloons with an accompanying red-light district, schools, churches, two newspapers, lots of restaurants, and a large Chinese population. The greatest entertainers of the day appeared on its stages, both at the disreputable Birdcage and at the Schieffelin Hall. The latter is the largest adobe structure in the southwest. Performances and town meetings were held there.

We felt obliged to attend one of the shows. Aptly named, considering the heat and sun.

We sat in the blazing sun waiting for the show to start and read about Tombstone. An amazing number of people passed through and lived in the city during its heyday. In 1882, the NY Times reported that "the Bird Cage Theatre is the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast." Doc Holliday played cards there. He probably contributed a few of the 140 bullet holes still visible in the building.

Tombstone was truly the Wild West. During the years of prosperity, its criminal, lawless component was a problem for the solid citizens but provided endless fodder for dime-novel writers and reporters. All this came to a halt after WWI when the cost of mining had become prohibitive. By the 1930's only about 150 people were left.

A parasol is great to have with you out here. It's hard to get enough sunscreen on to keep from getting burned.

The Wild West show is fun and funny but it's probably not so off base for what life was like in the !880s and 90s. A lot of the fights were undoubtedly fueled by the free-flowing liquor from the many saloons.

The Rose Tree Inn has displays showing furniture, clothing, and the lifestyle of the 1880s in Tombstone. Actually, the wealth of the city is apparent in these furnishings which are very rich for such an out-of-the-way city.

This corner is the 1880s equivalent of today's home office.

The Rose Tree Inn takes its name from this Lady Banksia rose that was originally planted here in 1885. It was brought from Scotland and now covers nearly 8,600 square feet. According to Guinness, it is the worlds largest rose bush.

Meredith standing in front of the trunk gives a better sense of the tree's proportion.

The limbs are supported by trellising held up by sturdy posts and braces. Banksia roses bloom once in the Spring. It's probably breathtaking when it blooms.

This cemetery was opened as the Tombstone Cemetery in 1879 and used until 1884 when a new one was opened. It was called the Old Cemetery until the late 1920, when a group of citizens cleaned up the vandalized gravesites and realized they had a tourist Mecca. They renamed it Boothill after the original in Dodge City (a city with as notorious and interesting as Tombstone's).