Tombstone’s Gunfight at the OK Corral
by Jane St. Clair
Tombstone, Arizona, where the cowboys live, sets in the mountains. It’s the Town Too Tough to Die.
It’s down the road from Bisbee, where the hippies live. Bisbee is the Town Too High To Die.
Tombstone today is part history
and part Halloween party.
It’s famous for the Gunfight at the OK Corral and Boothill Cemetery.
Boothill’s got many cool grave markers …
As well as net graves like The Tomb of the Unknown Cowboy — Killed by Indians, Found Dead in a Mine Shaft, Killed in a Card Game, and such.
Tombstone was full of cowboys in the 1880s who worked the mine on Toughnut Street 
and then drank all night at the 116 saloons in town. The slogan was Good whiskey and tolerable water!
The very cool citizens of Tombstone brag that other towns have histories but their town has a LEGEND. The guns, violence, and brave dead cowboys inherent in this LEGEND are so very American that it just makes you feel proud.
Everybody in Tombstone takes their LEGEND very very seriously. The actor who plays Doc Holliday quotes Shakespeare, while they play opera music during the reenactment. There are actually statues of all eight participants in their exact spots.This is serious stuff.
Doc Holliday was actually drunk during the Gunfight, but luckily he had a shotgun whereas the others had pistols.
The McLaury boys and the Clantons were feuding with the Marshall Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. It started over a hold-up of a Wells Fargo stagecoach, and just kept getting worse until the afternoon of October 26, 1881. Snow was falling. The good guys wore black dusters. The bad guys had red sashes round their waists.
The feud finally climaxed at the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Legend has it that they fired 30 shots in 30 seconds.
When the first shots fired, Ike Clanton ran tail and pleaded for his life.
Bam bam bam Bam BAM – !!! Within a few seconds, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were dead. Doc Holliday got himself a permanent limp from a bullet hole to his knee.
The Earp brothers ended up just fine.
Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton ended up in Boothill Cemetery
With a great view of the mountains…
That night there was a party in the Bird Cage Saloon, which today is haunted by ghosts of cowboys and saloon women.
If you’re psychic, the images of ghosts will appear in your pictures of the Bird Cage. The ghost of Wyatt Earp’s lady/friend is in the little mirror in this picture.
At night you can still have a great time in the saloons of Tombstone, and you feel all goosebumpy and part of history.
So pardner, it’s true — old cowboys and their legends never die,
They just ride off into the sunset and live in technicolor movies forever and ever.
Netflix has a terrific new series called “Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War.” For more information, go here.