In late 1880s, the ‘cow-boys’ weren’t nice

Recently in the Arizona history almanac in your paper it said that in 1882 President Chester Arthur threatened to place the Arizona Territory under martial law “unless it showed more respect for law and order. The warning was directed chiefly at Cochise County.” It didn’t explain exactly what was going in Cochise County. Would you, please?

Well, it was pretty much a lack of respect for law and order, to the power of 10. Maybe more.

In those days, Tombstone, then the county seat, was a silver-mining boom town with the vices and violence we’ve learned to expect of such places.

That situation wasn’t helped much by the “cow-boys,” which is what they were called back then. These cowboys weren’t exactly Roy Rogers. We’re talking about guys like Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo, just to mention a few.

Back then, “cow-boys’’ was another way of saying dagnab-low-down-snakebelly cattle rustlers. And it has been estimated there were 200 to 300 such ruffians in Cochise County then, allied in a loose affiliation of bad guys.

The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral was sort of the climax of all this. The Clanton-Earp shootout is well documented and there are probably people out there who could tell you what Wyatt had for breakfast that day. I’m not one of them. The real end to Tombstone’s rootin’ tootin’ days came a few years later when the mines flooded beyond recovery. Most folks moved on.