Wyatt Earp
Ninety years ago today … Glancing at the calendar I was nagged by something significant but couldn’t read the note.
The memo was to write you about that day but could not recall what it was. I did the reasonable thing, an internet search, but there were just too many events on the thirteenth of January.
Actress Shelly Winters married Gerry DeFord in 2006 a few hours before she died. She was 85. They cohabited for nearly twenty years and must have felt it was then or never.
And who was Gerry DeFord? I don’t know.
And so it went until it came to me as things do these days.
Wyatt Earp was not particularly famous during his life but when he lived in Toombstone, Ariz., it was not a backwater place.
News the gunfight at the OK Corral spread across the country and might have been part of the reason why my grandfather’s brother headed west and became a lawman. My grandfather was 10 years old in 1881.
News reports told of lawmen who took on a gang of thugs and came out on top. Thirty rounds were fired in thirty seconds. That was a very, very long gunfight.
But what was Toombstone, Ariz., like at 3 p.m. on Wednesday the 26th of October 1881?
The town sat on a honeycomb of silver mines and the mine tailings were crushed and spread over the streets. It was dusty.
There were three newspapers, two barber shops with baths, two banks, two drug stores, seven grocery stores, nine “fine” restaurants including Italian, French and Chinese. There were bakeries and an ice cream shop, an ice plant, four church buildings and fire hydrants. The volunteer fire department had two-hose carts and a hook-and-ladder wagon..
There were scores of saloons of various sizes, a bowling alley, a school, brothels, a bunch of lawyers and a few doctors. There were lumber yards, women’s shops, hardware stores, clothing stores, blacksmiths. There were telegraph poles along the seventy-five foot wide streets and fourinch water mains were being replaced by sixinch pipes.
The population was in majority miners, prospectors plus cowboys, single men who wanted to spend their money on the wild side.
In July of 1882 a special census recorded the names, ages and place of birth of 5,300 men who were registered to vote. Women and children were not counted. The itemized residents included 559 Irish, 423 Hispanics, 245 Chinese with a sizable Jewish and German population.
People sought a normal life. Mine owners, upright citizens and investors wanted a stable community. Women of the town held functions such as the Home Dramatic Association, tea dances and concerts by the Toombstone Brass Band.
There was high entertainment including opera and famous traveling performers at the huge Schieffelin Hall and low entertainment at the Bird Cage Theater.
The Masonic Lodge, “King Solomon Lodge #5” still meets in Schieffelin Hall.
Wyatt Earp died January 13, 1929.
Joe Phillips writes his “Dear me” columns for several small newspapers. He has many connections to Walker County, including his grandfather, former superintendent Waymond Morgan. He can be reached at joenphillips@hotmail.com.