Wed. Nov. 19 It's a comfortable 55 degrees this morning when we leave Tucson and turn on hwy 80 south to Tombstone. As we enter Tombstone we pass the Boothill Graveyard where they have researched and marked the graves accurately by studying the records at the Courthouse. When you round the curve entering town you pass Wyatt Earp's home.We take a right turn on 4th street and park across the street from the visitor's center to obtain info. We are early enough that it's not many people here yet. We walk to the different historical points that the lady had marked on the map for us. We get a sandwich for lunch. More visitors are coming into town now. We ride back to Boothill and walked around lookingat the grave markers. If they could not identify the person buried there they were listed unknown, which was seldom, because they had such accurate records. The hey-days of Tombstone really didn't last but from 1881 to 1889, that was when the mines flooded. They had 2 fires 1881 & 1882 that destroyed a lot of the town. One of the most famous honky-tonks in America at that time was the Bird Cage Theater. In the 9 years it was open, the doors stayed open 24 hours a day. Before it closed in 1889 it would be the scene of 16 gunfights, leavinf 140 bullet holes in the walls and ceilings. The longest poker game was a house game and the players had to buy a $1,000 minimun of chips ( equal to $33,000 today) too geta seat at the table. The game ran continually (day & night) for 8 years, 5 months & 3 days. The house take from the poker game was a little over $1,000,000 during that time, for today's value multiply 33 to that, not bad. When the floods shut down the mines, they couldn't pump the water out fast enough, it was a death blow to the town. The Bird Cage Theater was sealed and boarded up with all it's fixtures and furnishing left intact. For 50 years it stayed sealed until 1934 when it and the rest of the town became a Historical Landmark of the American West. Everything is as it was when sealed in 1889. Curtains, furniture, chips still on the tables, and whiskey in bottles, all left there as if they just shut down for the night.
We left Tombstone headed south to Bisbee, which took over as county seat after almost everyone left Tombstone. Right beside the hwy there is a hugh open pit copper mine as we pass through Bisbee. We get into Douglas and miss the turn to the gas station so I figure there will be another one before leaving town. We travel through and outside town we stop at a borber check point where 2 law officers are checking the gun case of some guy, good they didn't check my pocket. I ask them if there was a gas station between there and Lordsburg, told them we were trying to get back to Mississippi. There was none, they said go back to town. Fueled up and heading north on hwy 80 we wave at the border guards as we pass by them. I round a curve and a male roadrunner is running a hen out in front of me, I almost got me one to mount. We pass a monument on the side of the road saying at that spot Geronimo surrendered to the U.S. Army. We make it to I10 and head east going through Lordsburg and stop in Deming, New Mexico for the night.