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Our visit to Tombstone, Arizona ended with another swim in the outdoor heated pool and another soak in the hot tub. We could get used to this life!
Tombstone was fascinating but I must tell you about the astronomical phenomenon we saw on the way back to the motel. We saw a sun dog. A sun dog manifests itself as a halo around the sun. The halo was a complete circle - a rainbow, in fact. The weatherman on the local television channel claimed the colors of the halo we saw were the reverse of a normal rainbow but we didn't notice. We didn't take a picture, either.
Tombstone has worked hard to preserve its history. This silver mining town once boasted a population of twenty to thirty thousand. About fifteen hundred people now live there. Many of the buildings are still original from the 1880's, although two devastating fires around 1880 destroyed most of the original town. Automobiles now drive up and down the streets, sharing the road with stagecoaches.
Cowboys and lawmen walk up and down the wooden sidewalks, dressing the part of their infamous heritage. A gunfight at the O.K. Corral happens most days at 2 p.m. We attended the staged show that occurred just yards from the where the actual fight took place.
We had lunch at Big Nose Kate's Saloon. Kate was Doc Holiday's wife. The caretaker of the saloon had a small bedroom in the basement where he secretly tunneled into the existing silver mines below the city. No one knows how much silver he extracted from the mines. We took a spiral staircase in the center of the saloon down to his bedroom and the secret entrance that he excavated.
We viewed a small museum containing the world's largest rose tree. The rose bush was planted in 1885 from a chute brought over to the United States from Scotland. The tree now covers 8,000 square feet and is listed in the Guinness Book of Worlds Records as the largest rose tree.
We toured the Tombstone Epitaph, the town newspaper that reported the infamous gunfight. Tombstone got its name when its founder traveled alone in Apache territory searching for precious metals. His friends and family warned him that the only stone he would ever find would be his tombstone. The town newspaper got its name when the editor stated that "every tombstone needs an epitaph."
Our Tombstone trip concluded with a trip to Boot Hill on the way out of town. Be sure to examine the pictures of the various tombstones, especially that of Lester Moore. His epitaph contains an excellent play on words. The "losers" of The Gunfight at O.K. Corral are buried there, too.
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