Introduction
Meet Jed Pengelly, a hard-rock miner who came to Tombstone in 1887 to work the silver seams of the Grand Central Mine. Like thousands of men who poured into Cochise County during the boom, many of them Cornish immigrants following the same trade their fathers had practiced in Cornwall's tin mines, Jed spent his days four hundred feet underground and his evenings above ground in a town that, for all its dust and gunfights, was more plugged into the modern world than most people realize.
Jed is not a real historical figure. He is a composite character, invented for this article to walk you through Tombstone in 1890 the way an actual miner might have experienced it. Every fact attached to him below, however, is real and documented: the products he could have bought, the technology he could have used, and the news he could have read that year. It turns out "old-fashioned" 1890 Tombstone had more in common with the world we live in today than most people assume.
Talking to the World
Jed could have sent a telegram home the same week he wrote it. Tombstone had telegraph service by January 1881, connecting the town to points east and west almost as soon as it existed. And if he wanted to reach the mine office directly, he had an even more surprising option: the Grand Central, where Jed worked, had a telephone line by 1881, just five years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the device in 1876. Most American cities didn't get telephone service that fast.
If Jed had a few spare coins and a taste for novelty, he could also have paid to hear Thomas Edison's phonograph play back a tinny recording, a curiosity that had been touring the country as a paid attraction since Edison patented the device in 1877.
Dressed and Armed for a Silver Camp
Jed's work clothes were themselves recent inventions. He almost certainly wore riveted denim waist overalls, patented in 1873 by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis specifically for men who worked as hard as he did, topped off with a Stetson "Boss of the Plains," the flat-brimmed, high-crowned hat John B. Stetson had introduced in 1865. If he owned a rifle, it was likely a Winchester Model 1873, a common sight across the frontier by 1890. And on his way into town he would have passed miles of barbed wire fencing off ranch land, a fencing technology patented only in 1874 that had already reshaped the entire West within a few years of its introduction.
Down in the Grand Central's tunnels, Jed knew that dynamite existed. Alfred Nobel had patented it back in 1867. But like most Tombstone-area miners, including the men whose work is described on our own Goodenough Mine tour, Jed was still blasting rock the old-fashioned way, with black powder, a far less powerful explosive than Nobel's nitroglycerin-based dynamite. Dynamite was modern. What Jed actually used underground was not.
Around the House
At home, Jed's shirts were mended on a Singer sewing machine, on the market since 1851, and fastened with a safety pin, patented by Walter Hunt back in 1849. He lit his pipe with a safety match, a Swedish invention in general use since 1855, washed up with a bar of Ivory soap that had been floating in wash basins since 1879, and, if he ever cut himself on rock or a dull drill bit, reached for a jar of Vaseline, sold since 1870.
On the Table
Jed could have put Heinz ketchup on his sandwich; H.J. Heinz had been bottling it in Pittsburgh since 1876. He might also have heard about a new soda-fountain drink out of Atlanta called Coca-Cola, first served in 1886, though it would be a few more years before it spread much beyond the South.
Capturing a Moment
If Jed wanted a photograph of himself to send home, he no longer needed to visit a professional studio. In 1888, George Eastman began selling the Kodak camera by mail for $25, preloaded with film for 100 exposures, under the slogan "you press the button, we do the rest." A moderately prosperous miner could have ordered one and taken his own pictures, something almost no one could do just a few years earlier.
News From Back East
Whatever newspaper reached Tombstone carried word of a rapidly changing world. Jed could have read about the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn for the first time; about the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886; and, if his paper was current, about the Eiffel Tower, barely a year old in 1890, having opened for the Paris World's Fair the previous spring.
Getting There
The one place Jed's modern world broke down was getting out of town. Despite three separate attempts to bring a railroad through Tombstone during the boom years, none succeeded, and the town wasn't connected to the rail network until 1903, thirteen years after our story is set. Anyone leaving Tombstone by train first had to stage out to the nearest railhead, usually Benson, 28 miles away.
Tombstone's own diarist, George Parsons, recorded just how strange that disconnect from the rail network could get. In a journal entry dated December 8, 1882, Parsons described riding out on horseback to meet a passing train and swinging aboard it while it was still moving, the way a robber would rather than a passenger. He rode on to Tucson, spent the night, and returned to Tombstone the next day. The situation Parsons described hadn't changed by 1890: catching a train from Tombstone still meant intercepting one, not boarding one at a station.
Jed Pengelly Never Existed
But almost everything on this list did. It's easy to picture 1890 Tombstone as a town frozen in the previous century. In truth, its residents were living through one of the most inventive stretches in American history, and a surprising amount of it had already reached even a rough silver camp in the Arizona desert.
Sources
- Heinz. "Our Story." heinz.com. [Heinz Ketchup, bottled since 1876.]
- Library of Congress. "This Month in Business History: World's First Coca-Cola Served." [Coca-Cola, first served May 8, 1886.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Match." [Safety matches, in use since 1855.]
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Object record, Singer sewing machine. [Patented August 12, 1851.]
- National Inventors Hall of Fame. "Walter Hunt." [Safety pin, patented April 10, 1849.]
- Vaseline (Unilever). Official heritage page. [Vaseline, sold since 1870.]
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Object record, Morse telegraph. [Telegraph, 1844.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Alexander Graham Bell." [Telephone, patented March 7, 1876.]
- True West Magazine. "Telephone Service to Tombstone." [Telephone lines to the Contention and Grand Central mines, 1881.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Phonograph." [Edison's phonograph, patent application filed December 1877.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Alfred Nobel." [Dynamite, patented 1867.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "How Jeans Turned the Whole World Blue." [Levi's riveted jeans, patented May 20, 1873.]
- National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. "History of the Cowboy Hat." [Stetson "Boss of the Plains," 1865.]
- American Rifleman (NRA). "The Winchester 1873: Winning the West for 150 Years." [Winchester Model 1873 rifle.]
- National Archives. "Barbed Wire" education resource. [Joseph Glidden's patent, issued November 24, 1874.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Kodak Camera." [Eastman's Kodak camera, 1888.]
- Library of Congress. Chronicling America guide, Golden Spike. [Transcontinental railroad completed May 10, 1869.]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Brooklyn Bridge." [Opened May 24, 1883.]
- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. "The Day the Statue of Liberty Was Dedicated." [October 28, 1886.]
- Tour Eiffel (official site). "History of the Monument." [Eiffel Tower, opened May 15, 1889.]
- Parsons Journal Volume 2 (December 8, 1882 entry), via the Tombstone Silver research wiki. [Source for the account of Parsons boarding a moving train near Tombstone.]
- Tombstone Silver Goodenough Mine tour script. [Source for the black powder vs. modern dynamite distinction used underground at Tombstone-area mines.]