In one afternoon: artsy/hippie and historic/old-fashioned

After lunch on the ranch on Sunday (pic above shows view from dining room) we drove the 25 miles to Bisbee, south of Tombstone, only about 10 mi. away from the Mexican border. 

From the early 1900s on Bisbee, located closeby the Mule Mountains, was home to one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world, the Queen Mine, but also gold, silver and other minerals were found here. 

Bisbee became the largest and one of the wealthiest cities in the Arizona territory with a population of over 20,000 in 1910, and one of the most cultured cities in the west. It also boasted theaters, nearly 50 saloons, bordellos, and, the famous Copper Queen Hotel (below).

The mining boom lasted till the mid-1970's, afterwards the mining families were substituted by an influx of creative "free spirits", old hippies, artists (photo on right shows the "spirit"). 

Still a relict of the old days are the flies on the walls - going way back, to the summer of 1912, when the Commercial Club in Bisbee came up with a way to try to control the flies. They set up a contest to see who could collect the most flies, with the winner receiving 10 dollars. One guy killed about 500,000 flies and since then flies are sort of the "symbol" of this nowadays artsy-hippie town.

Back we drove to Tombstone, "the town too tough to die". The same silverprospector Ed Schieffelin, whose gravesite we had visited the day before, had struck silver in the area in 1877. By 1880, a town of the same name around the mine was booming, with dance halls, gambling places and more than 20 saloons.  

A year later, Tombstone’s marshal was Virgil Earp, who, with his younger brothers, Wyatt and Morgan, and a gambler named Doc Holliday, vanquished the Clanton and McLaury boys in the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

 

Even today Tombstone (pop. 1,600) still has the boardwalks, wooden awnings and false fronts of the original town, and the streets are dusty. On this weekend, the historic group of the "Vigilantes" re-enacted the shoot-out in a very "authentical" way (photos above). Saloons were packed with bikers on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, the stagecoach was busy all day and tourists flooded the shops.

Historic Courthouse

We went to the same brewery where we had watched the Superbowl in Sierra Vista last week: Tombstone Brewery. By chance, we caught a good concert of "The Band Wanted" there (below).