ArizonaRealCountry.com 31 June 2017 By Bill Roberts Tombstone was a tossed-together boom town like many mining camps in Arizona Territory, but bigger than most in the 1880’s. It boasted 7,500 citizens, mostly men, mostly miners, and hangers on such as saloon keepers, gambler, card sharks, prostitutes, gun slingers and those that would be, and a host of businesses that supplied the mines, miners, ranchers and townsfolk. The heart of the town was between 3rd and 4th streets and Allen and Fremont streets. In this block, facing Fremont, was the pride of the town, a red brick town hall. The vast majority of the other buildings surrounding this imposing structure were made of adobe, on both sides of Fremont and Allen and on 4th. The side of 3rd occupying the main block of downtown where the town hall stood was still mostly vacant lots. Only three small wood buildings stood there, towards the center of the block. Across the street on the opposite side of 3rd stood a bunch of hastily built clapboard or board and ten structures. At 3rd and Fremont, the several lots on the corner were vacant as they were at 4th and Fremont. Going down Fremont from the corner of 3rd, the first house was a small, clapboard home were lumber dealer W.A. Harwood lived. Between the Harwood home and the next structure on the block, Fly’s Boarding House, a large wood structure, there was a vacant lot. Going on east down Fremont, another vacant lot separated Fly’s and the small wood building housing the assay office. Still another vacant lot separated the assay office from a long, vacant adobe building, and the wooden house next to it. A long alley, lined by an 8ft. adobe wall, came next. It went from Fremont back into the O.K. Corral, Livery & Feed Store, which faced Allan St. and the O.K.’s barns and stalls. Between this driveway and the brick Town Hall a small wooden grocery store stood. The stalls for the O.K. Corral lined the side of the driveway behind the Town Hall. The driveway went from Fremont between the wood dwelling adjacent to Town Hall, past the stalls, wound through the feed yard and the adobe buildings of the O.K. Corral and out onto Allan St. The O.K. Corral was a large complex of adobe buildings and stalls, taking up four lots as it fronted on Allan and one lot on 4th, Where an adobe barn with indoor stalls ran from the center of the corral complex to 4th. SHOOTING DOWN O.K. CORRAL MYTHS silver boom town where miners’ and drovers’ wages were easy pickings for professional gamblers and gunmen like the Earps, with little law around to interfere, especially if they were the law. Both Wyatt and Virgil had experience as lawmen, Wyatt born in Illinois in 1848, had been a constable in Lamar, Missouri and a policeman in both Wichita and Dodge City. Although Wyatt had been once arrested in India territory for stealing horses, he later became a shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo & CO. in Dakota Territory, in New Mexico and briefly, in tombstone. Virgil was a Civil War Veteran, had been a stagecoach driver in Nebraska, later joined Wyatt in Dodge City, then moved to Prescott in 1877. There, He drove a mail wagon and worked some mining and timber property. He assisted the town marshal in the arrest of some Texas bandits who were plaguing Prescott and The Miner noted that Virgil’s Winchester was one of the most effective weapons on the side of town’s lawmen. Virgil killed one of the Texas outlaws. He served as town watchman for four months in 1879. In November of 1879, U.S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake appointed him deputy U.S. Marshal and assigned him to Tombstone. He took Wyatt and Morgan with him. The Earp brothers rode out of Prescott to and editorial blast from The Miner that noted the town would be better off with their departure. Obviously, the Earp’s had not endeared themselves to the frontier newspaper’s editor. Wyatt tried to parley his experience in the two Kansas cow towns into getting himself elected Sheriff of Cochise County, but he lost to Johnny Behan. Johnny was a man who knew how to play politics and earn the support of the “cowboys” that were terrorizing both sides of the international boarder with cattle and horse rustling, stage robberies, holdups of ranches stores, and murder of those who tried to stand up to them. Johnny Beham also had come to Tombstone from Prescott, having been Sheriff of Yavapai Co. in the early 1870’s. Wyatt himself was not above dealing with the “cowboys.” He had tried to make a deal with Old Man Clanton, the reputed head of the outlaws, in exchange for support. There has been a resurgence of books on Tombstone, the Earps, and the famed “Shootout at the OK Corral” of late. This enduring legend is one where myth, fancy and truth have, through the years, become extremely muddied. The story is as much about the events that built up to the famous shootout as it is about the bloody gunfight itself. It is one about the characters of the participants in the feud between the Earps and the Clantons. It is a story of the failures of the Arizona Territorial Government and of Washington to stop the banditry, rustling and terrorism by the ‘cowboys’ along the border. It is a story of bitter political rivalry between Wyatt Earp and the corrupt Sheriff of Cochise County. It is a story of rivalry over a woman and over a badge, perhaps more than any other factor, that brought Wyatt Earp into the fray between the Clantons and the Earp brothers, Virgil and Morgan. All of these things are the meat of the story, often lost in the dramatization of the shootout itself, a shootout where the “good guys” where not easy to distinguish from the bad. continued on page 32 The large adobe complex took up a full third of the block between Allan and Fremont and 3rd and 4th and contained a big carriage house, a harness shop, an office, Several large adobe barns, lodging quarters, and stores, corrals and feed storage barns. Once past Town Hall going toward 4th on the Fremont side of the block, the entire corner consisting of some half dozen lots was vacant. Across 4th from these vacant lots, on the northeast corner of the intersection, stood Hafford’s Saloon. A Day Of Legend And Myth This was the scene in the heart of Tombstone that fateful day of October 26, 1881. It was a day that just didn’t start right for the Clanton’s or the Earps. Virgil Earp, not Wyatt, was born a U.S. Deputy Marshall and Town Marshall of Tombstone. The town was tense. The Earp Brothers, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan, had come to town two year earlier from Prescott to ply their trade as gamblers in the lucrative