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Tombstone, AZ

Tombstone, AZ

A nostalgic trip into the past … Ed Schieffelin was briefly a scout for the U. S. Army headquartered at Camp Huachuca. Schieffelin frequently searched the wilderness nearby looking for valuable ore samples. When friend and fellow Army Scout Al Sieber learned what Schieffelin was up to, he is quoted as telling him, “The only rock you will find out there will be your own tombstone”, or, according to another version of the story, “Better take your coffin with you, Ed; you will only find your tombstone there, and nothing else”. On finding silver, Schieffelin filed his first claim and fittingly named his stake Tombstone. Soon, word got out, more claims were filed nearby and the town of Tombstone was born. It became one of the last boomtowns in the American frontier and at one time was one of the largest cities in the western United States.

On the evening of March 15, 1881, three Cowboys attempted to rob a stagecoach en route from Tombstone to Benson, Arizona. The driver Eli “Budd” Philpot and a passenger named Peter Roerig were both shot and killed. Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp and his temporary deputies and brothers Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp pursued the Cowboys suspected of the murders. This set off a chain of events that culminated on October 26, 1881, in a gunfight in a vacant lot owned by famous photographer C. S. Fly near, not at the O. K. Corral as popularly known, during which the lawmen and Doc Holliday killed Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton. This incident known now as the gunfight at the O. K. Corral is likely what the town is now best known for.

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