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Tombstone, Arizona - Hotels, Lodges, Bed and Breakfeast

The Tombstone, Arizona U.S. Marshal's Badge recalls the mining town of Tombstone, with its storied Boot Hill Cemetery and Gunfight at the OK Corral. Even though history records several gunfights with more combatants and a much higher body count, the OK Corral shoot-out is acknowledged by historians to be the most famous gunfight in the history of the American West.

Though Tombstone was quite a metropolitan city for its day and time, its remote location made it an isolated place, surrounded by unpopulated desert with no railroad access. By the 1880s, Tombstone was known as one of the deadliest places in the west--thanks to a bitter feud between a criminal gang calling themselves the "Cow-Boys" and the businessmen, investors and immigrant miners who ran the city and the nearby silver mines.

On October 26, 1881, at about three in the afternoon, this simmering powder keg exploded in a hail of gunfire that would come to be known as the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Wyatt Earp, his two brothers Morgan and Virgil, and the notorious gunslinger, Doc Holliday, shot it out with a quartet of the Cow- Boys that included Ike Clanton and his younger brother, Billy, along with the McLaury brothers, Frank and Tom.

According to a clipping from The Epitaph, Tombstone's famous newspaper, the trouble began when Ike Clanton was arrested that morning for violating a city ordinance against carrying firearms within Tombstone city limits.

Virgil Earp was Tombstone's City Marshal, and also a Deputy Federal Marshal for Arizona Territory. Like many lawmen hired to be "town tamers" in that era, the first thing Virgil had done after taking the job was ask the city council to enact an ordinance against carrying guns within the city limits.

The charge against Clanton that morning was disorderly conduct. He put up a fight when Virgil asked him to surrender his pistol, and was pistol-whipped, disarmed and fined twenty-five dollars. He paid the fine, was released and left town, after swearing to return and take vengeance upon the Earp brothers. Expecting trouble from Clanton and his Cow-Boy pals, Virgil had temporarily deputized both his brother, Wyatt, and their long-time friend, Doc Holliday.

True to his word, Clanton returned that afternoon with his brother and the McLaury brothers in tow. The infamous confrontation--in which thirty shots were fired in the space of about thirty seconds--began around the OK Corral, but played out in and around the streets of Tombstone.Considering their proximity to each other, it was miraculous that only three men died that day. Billy Clanton and the two McLaurys were killed, but Ike Clanton, protesting that he was unarmed, had run from the fight and emerged unscathed.

Neither Virgil nor his brother and deputy Morgan Earp had a reputation for being particularly skilled with a gun, and probably would not have survived an armed confrontation with the Clantons and McLaurys, if he hadn't deputized his brother and Holliday. But that didn't stop County Sheriff John Behan from charging both Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday with murder in the incident, on the grounds that neither were lawmen at the time of the shootout. The charges didn't stick, since they had been legally deputized at the time. A grand jury would twice decline to indict either man, and they charges were eventually dropped.

Though all three Earp brothers survived the OK Corral shootout, they suffered brutal reprisals from vindictive Cow-Boys, which were likely orchestrated by Ike Clanton. Virgil Earp was shot from ambush and lost the use of one arm as a result of his wounds. Morgan Earp was shot and killed a short time later, provoking Wyatt Earp to embark on his famous "vendetta ride", vowing to wipe out the Cow-Boys once and for all.

Ironically, he did not kill Ike Clanton. Clanton would die six years later, when he was fatally shot by lawmen while resisting arrest after he was caught rustling cattle in 1887.

Wyatt Earp lived many more years, moving to Los Angeles in his later years, where he became friends with movie cowboy, Tom Mix and eventually died peacefully in his bed.

Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis at the age of 36 in a Glenwood Springs, Colorado sanatorium.

Author. JoAnn Graham. Visit her website. http://www.gunsofold.com/

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Places to stay in Tombstone:

The Tombstone Grand Hotel...580 W Randolph Way, Tombstone

SageBrush Inn...227 North 4th Street, P.O. 1511, Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone Monument Guest Ranch...895 West Monument Road, Tombstone, AZ.

Wyatt's hotel...109 S 3rd St, Tombstone, AZ. Telephone: 520-678-7281

Landmark Lookout Lodge...781 AZ-80, Tombstone, AZ.

T. Miller's Tombstone Mercantile & Hotel...530 E. Allen Street, P.O. Box 595, Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone Grand Hotel....580 West Randolph Way, Tombstone, AZ. Phone: 520-457-9507.

Marie's Engaging Bed & Breakfast...Corner of 4th and Safford,101 N. 4th Street, Tombstone.

Katie's Cozy Cabins...16 W. Allen St. Tombstone, AZ