Tidbits From Tombstone

I'm a little late in getting this post out.  I get so wrapped up in the history of places, time passes me by WAY too fast.  

Meet James Pinkerton McAllister, a nice Irish gent who lost both his parents by the time he was ten.  He did finish school at the age of 15 when he sailed to America on his own in 1857.  By 1860, he was headed to California, not for the gold, but to see the giant redwood trees.  

After mining for awhile without a lot of success, he decided to walk over the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range to Virginia City where he apprenticed himself to the Fulton Foundry.  There he worked for 19 years before becoming General Manager.  Time to move on.

 

 In 1882 he landed in Tombstone, purchased a big shop and started up the Tombstone Foundry and Machine Shop.  He was the town Treasurer from 1889-1892 before moving to Los Angeles and starting McAllister Iron Works.  He died in 1914 following an operation for appendicitis.

As you walk into the Bird Cage Theatre, look down.  These steel plates cover each entrance.  More on the Bird Cage at a later date.

 

 This is of course Big Nose Kate's saloon that I've showed you dozens of times.  It's the best place to eat lunch ... or at least that's what I used to think.  It sits on Allen Street, named after John B Allen, prospector, businessman and politician.

Born in 1818, John's profession as prospector didn't garnish him much.  Instead, he began baking dried apple pies, lending him the name John PIE Allen.  With the profits, he purchased a large ranch and alfalfa farm, eventually building a store in Tombstone.

After serving as Treasurer, Adjutant General and Mayor of Tombstone, he was stricken with cancer.  The townspeople got together and gave him a going away gift ... his tombstone.  All of which has nothing to do with Big Nose Kate's.

 

Every saloon in town had an upstairs and we all know what that was for.  This is the Crystal Palace Saloon.  It was originally the Golden Eagle Brewing Company, one of the earliest saloons in Tombstone.  They are not happy about Arizona's governor shutting everything down.  No surprise there, as many of the businesses are suffering and some have closed down for good.

 

 It burned to the ground in the 1882 fire, but was soon rebuilt and renamed the Crystal Palace Saloon.  It reinvented itself during prohibition as a theater.  The second story was built to house offices for U. S. Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp, attorney George Berry and the well known Dr. Goodfellow.  Today it has been restored and is back in business as a saloon.

 

Around the corner is the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper which is still published today.  For $25 you can receive every single monthly copy for one year.  It is the oldest continually published newspaper in Arizona.  

John Clum, originally from Tucson, decided to move to Tombstone.  He was harassed by his associates that he would be writing his Epitaph, not a newspaper.  That's how the Tombstone Epitaph was born, covering every second of the OK corral shootout as well as the trial later on.

 

They still have many of the plates used to print the newspaper in the small museum in the back.

 

 Next door on Fremont street, the main thoroughfare back in the day, lies Schieffelin Hall.  Ed Schieffelin was the one who found silver in this area and staked his claim.  When his brother Albert came to town, he and William Harwood built this huge adobe structure (the largest still standing in the Southwest).  It was a first class opera house, theatre and meeting hall.  This was for the upper class of Tombstone.

It would seat 575 people and had a stage curtain depicting a scene from Colorado considered a work of art.  It was the most highly decorated from Texas to San Francisco.  Al Schieffein's great niece Mary is still in charge.  One of these days I hope to find it open so I can go inside.  For one, I never knew it was an adobe building.

 

 Enough of history, it's time to EAT!  Not the fanciest of dining establishments in Tombstone, but this place has excellent burgers.  When asked if I wanted a quarter pound or a half pound burger, or a buffalo burger, I opted for the half.  BIG mistake. 

 

 I waited inside out of the heat while my to-go order was cooked.  I tried to be very surreptitious about taking a picture of their buffalo head that had it's own hole in the roof in order to fit.

 

 Here's my bacon cheeseburger.  There's enough food here for THREE people!  That burger ended up being 5 inches across and 1 inch thick!!!  Mighty tasty but I could only eat half.  I sat outside in the park devouring every bit I could.

 

 At one point in history, the town decided all the people located in the cemetery inside the city limits needed to be moved.  In all there were at least four cemeteries, including the Boothill Cemetery as you come into town.  Sadly, not everyone was moved.  The headstones, yes, but the bodies, not so much.  So be careful as you walk around town .... you just might be walking on someone's grave.