Tombstone Silver Newsletter
June 2026
Issue 4 — June 15, 2026
Three new articles join the Tombstone Silver history archive this month, all set in the 1880s: a decade when the silver camp reached its peak and then began its long transition away from the mines that built it. This issue features the story of Camillus Fly, the Fremont Street photographer who stood within earshot of the West's most famous gunfight and chose not to photograph it, then five years later walked alone into Geronimo's armed camp in the mountains of Sonora and came out with the only photographs ever taken of a hostile Apache camp before surrender.
History
The Photographer Who Walked Into Geronimo's Camp
Camillus Sydney Fly operated a photography gallery on Fremont Street during Tombstone's silver boom, two buildings from the vacant lot where, on October 26, 1881, the West's most famous gunfight took place. He was inside the gallery when the shots were fired. He walked out into the aftermath, helped disarm a dying man who was still calling for more ammunition, and never reached for his camera. The most photographed event in American Western mythology was never actually photographed at all.
Five years later, in March 1886, General George Crook traveled south of the border to Cañón de los Embudos in Sonora to negotiate the surrender of Geronimo and a band of Chiricahua Apache. Fly had learned of the pending talks through the territorial press, packed his photographic apparatus, and joined the Army column at Silver Creek without any prior authorization. Captain John Bourke, who witnessed what happened next, recorded it in his memoirs with evident astonishment. Fly picked up his equipment and walked alone into the hostile Apache camp, directing armed warriors to shift positions and turn their heads to improve his negatives. "Even in the midst of the most serious interviews with the Indians," one witness wrote, "he would step up to an officer and say 'just put your hat a little more on this side, General.'"
Over three days he made approximately fifteen exposures on eight-by-ten glass negatives, including portraits of Geronimo, Naiche, and their warriors. One of the prints was captioned "This group taken by special request of Geronimo." He sent the views to Harper's Weekly, which published six of them in April 1886 under the editors' declaration: "The photographs of the Apache War, reproduced in this issue, are the only photographs ever taken of a hostile camp before surrender." Print copies sold for fifty cents each; images showing Geronimo with Crook sold for a dollar.
Fly died in Bisbee in 1901 at fifty-two. Fourteen years later, a fire swept through his Fremont Street gallery and destroyed most of his Tombstone negatives. The Geronimo photographs survived because they had already left Arizona. They remain the only visual documentation of a hostile Apache camp before surrender, made by a civilian who simply decided to walk in.
New on the Site
Recently Published
- C.S. Fly: Tombstone's Photographer — The Fremont Street photographer who documented Geronimo's band before their surrender, the only civilian ever to photograph a hostile Apache camp.
- The Miners' Strike of 1884 — When Tombstone's mines cut wages in May 1884, four hundred men walked off the job, the town's principal bank failed nine days later, and soldiers arrived from Fort Huachuca; most of the large mines never fully recovered.
- John P. Clum: Apache Agent, Editor, and Mayor of Tombstone — The man who captured Geronimo, founded the Tombstone Epitaph, served as the town's first mayor, and was placed on the outlaw faction's death list after the O.K. Corral gunfight.
Did You Know?
The Man Who Captured Geronimo Was Twenty-Five Years Old
In April 1877, John P. Clum, a twenty-five-year-old civilian Indian agent, traveled to the Ojo Caliente reservation in New Mexico with twenty-five Apache police, concealed eighty more inside a commissary building, and called Geronimo and his men to a morning council. When Geronimo grew suspicious, the commissary doors opened and eighty armed Apache police came out at once. Geronimo and six companions were taken without a struggle and put in irons. Clum then marched more than 400 renegade Apaches back to San Carlos without military escort, covering 300 miles without incident. The U.S. Army, which had been cut out of the operation entirely, was furious.
Three years later, Clum arrived in Tombstone with a printing press, founded the Tombstone Epitaph on May 1, 1880, and became the town's first elected mayor. He was standing near Fremont Street on the morning of October 26, 1881, when he saw Ike Clanton holding a rifle on the corner minutes before the gunfight. His full story is told in the new article John P. Clum: Apache Agent, Editor, and Mayor of Tombstone.
Until next month, keep digging up Tombstone's past.
George Self