Imagining Tombstone

If not for one man and one town, the history of Southern Arizona would be no more celebrated than the history of Southern Oregon. That man, of course, is Wyatt Earp, and the town is Tombstone. The story of Earp’s feud with the cowboys, and the showdown on the streets of Tombstone, near the OK Corral in 1881, has been detailed in countless books, magazine articles, and films. Why an itinerant frontier gambler and a dusty mining camp rose to such levels of cultural significance has puzzled historians for several generations. Kara L. McCormack makes sense of it all in Imagining Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die. Although Tombstone’s boom lasted less than ten years, it was one of the most important mining towns of the Old West. Unlike scores of forgotten mining camps, Tombstone remains today a popular destination, albeit for tourists, not gamblers, gunfighters, and hardrock miners. With the notable exception of Andrew Isenberg’s Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life (2013), most of Tombstone’s history comes from avocational historians. Thus McCormack’s study is both timely and welcome.

Alley · Ancient history · Archaeology · Boom · Feud · Frontier · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeology and Natural History · Engineering · History