Tombstone Silver Newsletter
October 2026
Issue 8 · October 15, 2026
Two new articles join the archive this month, and between them they cover the two things Tombstone residents did most when they weren't working underground: they went out, and they read the paper. There's also something new to watch on an old favorite, and the second installment of "This Month in Tombstone," which turned up a lightning strike, an Apache scare, and a judge with a shotgun.
History
A Quiet Week in Tombstone
In December 1881, only weeks after the gunfight near the O.K. Corral, the editor of the Epitaph sat down to describe what he called a quiet week in Tombstone. It had included meetings of the firemen, the Odd Fellows, the City Council, and the Literary and Debating Society, plus a ball, a play, a dancing school, and a couple of private parties.
Two years earlier, the camp's first religious service had been held in Sam Danner's tent saloon, with the bar closed for the hour and old playing cards for tickets. By 1882 the town had twelve musical groups, three dance academies, a free library in a tobacco shop, and a group of men planning a building for their microscopical society. One farewell party was held inside the hoisting works of the Head Center mine, on a freshly waxed floor between the engine and the main shaft.
This is the busy, sociable, sometimes ridiculous town the movies left out, including a six-day walking match in which a woman billed as Madam Du Pree beat her best male challenger by 277 miles.
Places & Landmarks
The Newspaper That Would Not Die
John Clum meant to call his newspaper The Clarion. He changed his mind just before the first issue, deciding that every self-respecting tombstone needed an epitaph. It was a joke, but a durable one.
The paper he started in a windblown tent on Fremont Street in 1880 buried its rival, the Nugget, within two years. It changed hands and politics again and again, survived a courtroom fight over whether it could even keep its own name, and is still published in Tombstone today, which is more than can be said for almost anything else the silver boom produced.
This Month in Tombstone
Octobers of the Boom
• October 19, 1880: After two sleepless weeks of telegrams, title snags, and a seller who kept changing his mind, George Parsons closes his first mining deal and clears several hundred dollars. "It was a fight for grub and a start in business and I won," he writes. "Champagne tonight."
- October 24, 1880: "A fearful day. Rain in torrents at times and blinding lightning flashes." Lightning kills a man at L. W. Blinn's lumber yard, and Parsons records the camp's grim joke: "Of course, it is said, there must be a huge mineral deposit in immediate vicinity."
- October 31, 1880: City Marshal Fred White, shot by a cowboy in the early hours of October 28, is buried with what Parsons calls an "immense demonstration." The Reverend McIntyre's sermon "hit some of the people hard licks."
- October 5–7, 1881: Word of Apaches fighting soldiers in Dragoon Pass sends twenty-odd armed townsmen after them, with Sheriff John Behan elected captain and an Earp as first lieutenant. Parsons rides along through the hardest rain he has ever seen in Arizona, sleeps under a ranch table, and finds no Apaches. "125 miles is no mean saddle ride."
- October 27, 1881: Parsons rides back into town from the Huachucas the day after the street fight near the O.K. Corral and finds people "apprehensive and scary." Even ordinary conversation feels risky: "Loud talking, or talking in groups, was thought out of place."
- October 7, 1882: Richard Rule takes over as editor of the Epitaph, a small irony for longtime readers, since Rule had once edited the rival Nugget. More on the Epitaph →
- October 21, 1882: Judge James Reilly, armed with a double-barreled shotgun and two revolvers, retakes a disputed town lot at Fifth and Fremont and has his men cut a doorway through his rival's brand-new stone wall. It ends in "only a war of words." The Epitaph notes that "the police force showed no disposition to interfere, and if the matter had come to a fight the best man would probably have been allowed to win."
Now Watch
The Assayer's Art, Narrated
Before anyone could raise money for a mine, an assayer had to prove the silver was really there, using little more than crushed rock, lead, fire, and a very fine balance. "The Assayer's Art" now opens with a two-minute illustrated video that walks through the whole process, from a raw chunk of ore to a gleaming bead of silver no bigger than a pinhead.
New on the Site
Recently Published
- A Quiet Week in Tombstone: Social Life in the Boom Years: Balls, lodges, debating clubs, amateur opera, and a six-day walking match. The crowded social calendar of a camp that became a town almost overnight.
- The Tombstone Epitaph: The Newspaper That Would Not Die: Named as a joke in a Fremont Street tent, it outlasted its rival, its founders, and the silver boom itself.
Until next month, keep digging up Tombstone's past.
George Self