Two Minutes Past Two
The tremor reached Tombstone at 2:11 in the afternoon. The first sign was a sound that many residents mistook for a dynamite blast, the kind of concussion that miners in the district had grown accustomed to. Then the ground began to shake in earnest. Along Allen Street, gaping cracks appeared in building walls. Inside the Crystal Palace Saloon, globes toppled from the chandeliers and shattered on the floor. Merchandise fell from shelves in stores throughout town, and glassware crashed to the ground. The major shock lasted about forty seconds, but smaller rumblings continued for several hours afterward, keeping residents uneasy well into the evening.
The quake was felt deep in the mines as well. William F. Staunton, a mining engineer, was working in the Toughnut Mine about 150 feet below the surface when the shock hit. He heard a loud explosion, then a thunderous roar, as loose rock from the hanging walls crashed down and struck sparks off the footwall. Staunton shouted to his partner, Sam Cheyney: "It's an earthquake. Get under something quick!" Cheyney replied, "The Lord knows, I'm under enough already." Regular operations at the Toughnut resumed not long after. At the West Side Mine, workers at the 500-foot level dropped their tools, boarded the cage, and rode to the surface. They gathered outside, talked the matter over, and went back to work.
The Geology That Saved a Town
Tombstone escaped with little more than cracked plaster and broken glass, and the reason was geological. The town sits on solid rock, which absorbs and disperses seismic energy without the violent amplification that softer ground produces. Fourteen miles to the west, Charleston sat on alluvial soil along the banks of the San Pedro River, and the difference in experience was stark. The earthquake there lasted thirty seconds and left every building in town damaged. Boulders broke loose in the neighboring mountains, rolled down the slopes striking sparks, and started fires in the foothills. Water spurted from large fissures in the earth, and some spring-fed streams stopped flowing altogether. The local residents abandoned Charleston that afternoon and moved to Tombstone and other nearby communities.
Charleston had already been in serious decline. The Tombstone mines flooded in the early 1880s, the mills shut down, and the businesses that depended on mill traffic had been closing for years. The earthquake did not start Charleston's end, but it finished it. By 1889, only a handful of families remained on the site, and within a few more years the town was gone entirely.
Unexpected Benefits
Not all of the earthquake's effects were destructive. At St. David, just north of Charleston along the San Pedro River, the tremor lasted a full three minutes. Several buildings collapsed and the schoolhouse was wrecked, but the children were at recess when the quake struck and no one was hurt. In the days that followed, artesian ponds appeared in the valley, bringing fresh water to a community that had long suffered from stagnant pools and a persistent malaria epidemic. The new water supply transformed conditions in St. David, and the malaria subsided significantly.
On the Abbott Ranch in the Sulphur Springs Valley, northeast of Tombstone, a group of cowboys was in the middle of a roundup when the ground began to roll. The parched earth opened in every direction, and geysers of water shot up as high as two feet, filling the surrounding washes in a matter of minutes. One stream gushing from a seam ten inches in diameter created a shallow lake nearly a mile wide. The ranch owners immediately began calculating how much land they could irrigate. Within a few days, however, the water level dropped and the springs returned to their former state, leaving the big plans unrealized.
Tombstone Reacts
Once the immediate alarm passed, Tombstone responded in characteristic fashion. That evening, a local character known only as "Pinkey" entered the Crystal Palace Saloon, where a faro game was in full progress. He glanced around the room, then threw a pound of large bird shot against the walls. The pellets came showering down with a tremendous clatter. The lookout man at the gaming table yelled and dove flat on the floor. The dealer shouted and ran. The Tombstone Epitaph called it a cruel joke to play on an already-shaken populace, and the assessment was fair. The next morning, an insurance agent named J. V. Vickers was circulating handbills around town advising residents to protect themselves against earthquake accidents. Whatever terror the quake had produced, Tombstone's commercial instincts were undimmed by morning.
Dr. Goodfellow Investigates
Dr. George Goodfellow, Tombstone's physician and one of the most capable men in the territory, recognized the earthquake as something worth studying carefully. He traveled into the affected region, examined the damage, interviewed witnesses, and gathered data on the scope and character of the tremor. His report, "The Sonora Earthquake," was published in the journal Science in 1888 and became one of the first serious scientific investigations of seismic activity in the American Southwest. Goodfellow noted that the earthquake's epicenter was located near Bavispe, Sonora, approximately 30 miles south of the international border, and he documented the varying degrees of destruction across the region. His work helped establish that the Southwest was seismically active in ways that had not been previously documented. The Tucson Weekly Citizen, reflecting on the event, noted that those who had read the records of the Spanish mission fathers over nearly 300 years found no account of a similar disturbance, making the 1887 quake effectively unprecedented in the written history of the region.
Sources
- Bennett, E. Fay. "An Afternoon of Terror: The Sonoran Earthquake of May 3, 1887." Arizona and the West, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 1977), pp. 107–120. Journal of the Southwest.
- Loring, William B. "The 1887 Earthquake." Cochise County Historical Society Journal, Vol. 18 (1988), pp. 41–42.
- Fulton, Richard J., and Conrad J. Bahre, eds. "Charleston, Arizona: A Documentary Reconstruction." Arizona and the West, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 1967), pp. 41–64.
- Goodfellow, George E. "The Sonora Earthquake." Science, Vol. XI (January–June 1888), pp. 162–166.
- Tombstone Schools 1879–1974. Cochise County Historical Society, 1974.