Life In The Old West

 Hillary is mad!  As with any hurricane, she lost some momentum as she hit the coast of Mexico, but she kept swirling her skirts like a flamenco dancer on fire.  When I get three warnings on my phone within 30 minutes, it's time to pay attention, so I wandered out in the driveway to take a look.  

This time she left most of her lightning and thunder at home.  Weirdly, as happens most of the time, this side of the foothills causes many of these big storms to split in half right over our area.  I expected a gully washer.

At last, about 9:00 or so, it began to rain pretty heavy for a time with some thunder, but nothing like we have seen in the past.  On the other hand, I heard that Quartzsite was handing out sand bags and preparing for a big flood.  They got a flash flood warning but I don't know if that happened or not.  Thank you Hillary ... we needed the rain.

And so we flash back to the Old Courthouse in Tombstone.  It's a pretty big building, and totally worth the $7.00 admission.  You can wander through most every room, getting a good idea of a life of hardship.

Well ... mostly hardship.  This entire cabinet is full of beautiful silver items from the tables of the rich mine owners.  Maybe not ALL rich.  I have no idea where she got it, but my grandmother had two of these table condiment keepers, which I now proudly display in my cabinet.  

If you think about it, I imagine most of the families that came west were probably pretty well off.  I mean how could you afford wagons and horses in order to get here without some kind of cash.  Even later with train travel, you had to have a wad of green stuff.  There's only one here ... the second, and the view of the stairs, is in the mirror backing.

The clothes ..... oh the clothes.  They had the best fashions ever.  Just look at this dress with the 18" waist!  

Around the corner is a complete replica of an assayers office.  It would be fun to see just what they did to decide whether to keep digging in that hole or move to another one.  

Here's an instrument that caught my eye.  This is a CAMERA.  Who in the world invented this thing?  It's certainly not something I would want to pack around on my shoulder.  Creeping up on wildlife would be darn near impossible.

That's why guys like Camillus Sydney Fly opened his photography studio in Tombstone.  It's weird that this kind of business would make enough money to live off of.  I would think more in the line of groceries, or a saloon.

Many of his photos were sent back East to be published.  Back then, people were just as fascinated with the West as I am now.  He was even the Cochise County Sheriff from 1895 to 1897.  Having started out in a tent, he and his wife built a 12 room boarding house which overlooked the location of the gunfight.

Ike Clanton ran away and hid in Fly's studio.  Mr. Fly, armed with a Henry rifle, went outside and disarmed Billy Clanton as he lay dying against the house next door.  Oh the stories he could tell were he alive today.

C.S. Fly died in 1901. Sadly, almost all of his negatives were burned by this fire which destroyed his gallery in 1912.  This picture was taken by his wife Molly.  All the negatives that survived were donated to the Smithsonian, including several he had taken of Geronimo and his warriors.

Here's a sample shown in the museum.  Notice the chair.

Sitting just below is THE chair.  Or at least a similar chair.  As I processed these pictures, I noticed the back doesn't look quite right.  It certainly is a fabulous chair however, and was used for kids, visiting dignitaries and family portraits.

THIS GUY ... he's my favorite.  EeeeHawwww!  I don't know who came up with this idea, but what a crowd pleaser.  This section is all about the cattlemen ... or should I say cattle barons ... who grazed their herds in this area.  

And this is what they sat on.  I've ridden similar saddles over the years, mostly because we took what we could get.  There was no buying new saddles on the ranch.  It's like sitting on a 2 x 12.  Hard as a rock and NOT contoured hardly at all.  They are extra long in back to protect the horse from your saddle bags and bedroll, which makes them extremely difficult to throw on a horse.  Over the years, since that really isn't needed any more, the back has been shortened.

Speaking of cattle, one of the time honored occupations was cattle rustling and robbery.  That's where the Cowboys first got their name, and it had all the negative connotations you can imagine.  They were thieves, stealing cattle and horses from the Mexicans down south and selling them up north around Bisbee and Tombstone.

In 1883, six Cochise County "Cowboys" robbed a general store in Bisbee, killing five people, including a lawman and a pregnant women.  Oops!!!  It was called the Bisbee Massacre.  

John Heath was the mastermind and sentenced to life in the Yuma Territorial Prison.  The locals didn't like that, so they broke him out of jail and hanged him from a telegraph pole.  This is the view the other five had just before they were the first to be legally hung in Tombstone.

There were only seven men hung from the gallows here.  By that time the County Seat was moved to Bisbee.  Arizona became a state, so the County was no longer in charge of executions.  Apparently the gallows were cut down and used for firewood.  This is a reconstruction.

The five were buried in the Boothill Cemetery.  There were many people buried there, but no one to care for the graves.   The wooden headstones fell apart, so no one is really sure just WHO is where.

Of course there is a little more to the story, but I've got work to do today, so I'll finish up my relaxing "spa" trip tomorrow.  It's a lovely 75 degrees, which means OUTSIDE work today.