Location: Tombstone, Arizona
Summary: A fun and memorable visit to Boothill Graveyard, the OK Corral and Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, with plenty of Old West history, humour and a surprise encounter with a Spurs fan.
While in Tombstone, Arizona, I visited Boothill Graveyard and the OK Corral. Walking around Boothill was fascinating, and many of the gravestones had surprisingly funny engravings on them. The OK Corral itself was much smaller than I expected, and the mechanical show was so bad it was actually entertaining. Unfortunately, we were not there, long enough to see any of the live shows performed in the streets.
My Uncle Dave and I stopped in at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, where I was immediately confronted at the door by a dirty, low-down Tottenham Hotspur fan who objected to my Arsenal shirt. He had originally lived in Tottenham before moving to Tombstone and now worked in the saloon. And yes, he really was wearing spurs on his boots. After the banter, we enjoyed a lovely meal and a beer before playing a game of pool on the old table inside the saloon.
History
Tombstone is a historic western city in Cochise County, Arizona. It was founded in 1879 by Ed Schieffelin and became one of the last major frontier boomtowns of the American Old West. Between 1877 and 1890, the mines produced between $40 and $85 million in silver bullion, making it Arizona’s most productive silver district. The population grew rapidly from around 100 people to nearly 14,000 in less than seven years. Today, Tombstone is best known as the site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral and relies heavily on tourism.
The town was built on a mesa above the Tough Nut Mine. Within two years, Tombstone had a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, two banks, three newspapers and an ice cream parlour. It also had 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls and numerous dance halls and brothels. The more refined residents attended operas at Schieffelin Hall, while miners and cowboys preferred the Bird Cage Theatre, once described as the wildest and wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast.
Tensions simmered beneath the surface. Many townspeople and mining investors were Republicans from the Northern states, while many ranchers were Confederate sympathisers and Democrats. Tombstone’s proximity to the Mexican border made it a prime market for cattle stolen from Sonora by a loosely organised group known as The Cowboys. The Earp brothers, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Warren, arrived between 1879 and 1880 and soon clashed with Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury and other Cowboys. Months of threats and hostility eventually led to the confrontation that became the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral. The actual shoot out took place on Fremont Street, a short distance from the corral itself.
In the mid-1880s, the mines reached the water table, and expensive pumps were installed. A fire in 1886 destroyed the Grand Central hoist and pumping plant, and it was no longer profitable to rebuild. Tombstone nearly became a ghost town, saved only because it remained the Cochise County seat until 1929. The population dropped to 646 in 1910 but had risen to 1,380 by 2010.
OK Corral
The OK Corral was originally a livery and horse corral operating from 1879 to about 1888. Despite its association with the famous gunfight, the shoot out actually took place in a narrow lot six doors west of the corral’s rear entrance, between Harwood’s home and C. S. Fly’s boarding house and photography studio. The 1957 film Gunfight at the OK Corral cemented the idea that the fight happened inside the corral, and the location has been marketed that way ever since. Today, visitors can pay to watch a reenactment as part of the Tombstone Historic District.
Fun Fact
The phrase “O.K.”, used to name Tombstone, Arizona's historic O.K. Corral, had its origins in the Pennsylvania Dutch country of New York State in the mid-1800s. Today, the term appears in many languages, and has become one of the most used phrases in the world. It is even used in computer programs to indicate agreement. Not bad for an idiomatic expression that is over 150 years old and almost disappeared from use. Originally spelled with periods, this term outlived most similar abbreviations of the era owing to its use in President Martin Van Buren's 1839 campaign for reelection. During the presidential campaign, candidate Martin Van Buren was supported by a political club in his home town of Old Kinderhook originally called the “Oll Korrect” club. The name was later changed to “Old Kinderhook” and then shortened to “O.K.”. Van Buren was an O.K. Club member, and his supporters used the term as a general descriptive term for their candidate who they saw as “above average” or “outstanding”. The abbreviation proved eminently suitable for political slogans and campaign pins, although Van Buren lost the election. During the 1830s there was a humoristic fashion in Boston newspapers to reduce a phrase to initials and supply an explanation in parentheses. Occasionally, the abbreviations were deliberately misspelled to add to the humour. Opposition newspapers used O.K. in March 1839 as an abbreviation for all correct, the joke being that neither the O nor the K was correct. Here is how one unhappy opposition newspaper of the time described Van Buren's O.K. campaign pins: “frightful letters, significant of the birth-place of Martin Van Buren, Old Kinderhook, as also the rallying word of the Democracy of the late election, ''all correct'' . . . . Those who wear them should bear in mind that it will require their most strenuous exertions, to make all things O.K.”
The term then seems to have largely disappeared from use until some time after the Civil War. Eventually, it came back into general use, and was thus chosen by John Montgomery to describe his “O.K. Corral, Livery, and Feed Stable” which he founded in Tombstone, Arizona in February 1879. How should O.K. be written? John Montgomery always used “O.K.” on his Corral's 1880s signs. Today, however, there are many versions: two capital letters without periods, two capital letters with periods, o-k-a-y, or two small letters with periods. There is also the question of what part of speech O.K. represents: a noun, a verb, an interjection, a complete sentence, or part of another sentence? In fact, the term “O.K.” goes beyond the boundaries of any single grammatical category to encompass a considerable range of expressions. The famous October 26, 1881 “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” pitted Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday against the McLaurys and Clantons. In 30 seconds of gunfire, three men were killed and three were wounded. The Gunfight did not actually take place inside the O.K. Corral itself. Instead, it began in an 18-foot wide vacant lot behind the corral next to C.S. Fly's Boarding House and Photography Studio where Doc Holliday was living. Today, visitors to the O.K. Corral Museum Complex in Tombstone, AZ can visit the actual site of the gunfight, tour the O.K. Corral as it was in the 1880s, and even see Doc Holliday's room.
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