My wife and I celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary this weekend by heading south to Tombstone and Bisbee. I have family connections with both towns. My grandfather rode shotgun on the Wells Fargo stage between Tombstone and Bisbee at the turn of the century, and my mother was born in Bisbee in 1912. Both my maternal grandfather and grandmother are buried in Bisbee's Evergreen Cemetery.
I thought I'd share some pictures I took along the way.
First stop: Tombstone. This is the OK Corral, not far from the famous gunfight in 1881.
We hit Tombstone during their annual HellDorado festivity. Here are a couple of desperadoes who really look the part.
From the movie Tombstone:
The distaff side in Tombstone like being armed, also. Here is what one well-heeled damsel wore.
Here's a stagecoach waiting to pick up passengers -
We ate lunch at Cafe Margarita, 131 S. 5th Street. It used to be Nellie Cashman's place until about 3 years ago. Great Mexican (and Italian) food. Highly recommended. Here are a few local HellDorado characters chowing down there.
This is just an "artsy" shot of a back alley in Tombstone - taken while the wife was visiting a reptile museum (not much to my taste for things to do).
And then, on to Bisbee, farther south just 8 miles north of the border with Mexico. Bisbee is the southernmost mile-high city in the U.S. At the turn of the century, it was the biggest city between St. Louis and San Francisco, and the copper mines were in full roar. My grandfather was a mine foreman here; he and his men were "powder monkeys" - the guys who set the explosive charges underground. I gotta say that job took real guts. Here's the first view one gets of Bisbee coming in on U.S. 80.
Here's another overlook of Bisbee, with the "B" on Chihuahua Hill to the right. The Copper Queen Hotel, in continuous operation since 1902, is at the lower left.
This is Bisbee's town plaza at the easternmost end of Main Street. This is where Sheriff Harry Wheeler rounded up labor dissidents in 1917. He then marched them to a ballpark in nearby Warren, put them on cattle cars bound for the middle of New Mexico and told them never to come back. More about Harry in a bit.
Storm clouds were brewing as we stayed at the Copper Queen Hotel the first night.
That made for a dramatic sunset that evening. This is looking up Main Street; the combination post office and library on the left. Bisbee residents uniformly take their mail there; the post office will not home deliver - Bisbee homes are mostly located on hills, most of them accessible only by long stairways. My mom studied at the library here as a girl; she graduated from high school in 1929 and secured a one-year scholarship to Tulane University. She later graduated from Arizona State Teacher's College (now Arizona State University in Tempe). She worked as a grade school teacher and as a high school Spanish teacher for many years before retiring in the 1960s.
At dusk, the birds began to flock and roost in this tree in the Copper Queen plaza.
The next day, we had some visitors driving a couple of old Fords. Here are a couple of shots of them.
I've written about Captain Harry Wheeler before, but here's a summary. He held every rank in the Arizona Rangers between 1903 and 1909, finally becoming the captain of that rough and ready law enforcement unit. He then ran for sheriff of Cochise County (which includes Tombstone and Bisbee). He was elected to three successive terms. In 1917, the IWW was threatening to shut down the copper mines in Bisbee. This was during WWI, and copper was vital to the war effort. Harry was a red, white and blue patriot, and he was not about to let that happen. As mentioned, he rounded the agitators up, put them on cattle cars, and deported them to Columbus, New Mexico. He said he couldn't put 'em all in jail, so this was the next best thing. Once that was done, Harry resigned to become a Captain in the Army, and he journeyed East to board a ship for France. Before he did so, he bought a little Colt Model 1903 hammerless pocket pistol for self-protection. I purchased that very pistol not long ago, and I brought it to Bisbee to re-unite it for a few moments with its original owner.
Harry Wheeler is buried in Bisbee's Evergreen Cemetery, not far from where my own grandparents were later laid to rest.
Here is his grave, and I took a picture of it with the little gun he bought in early 1918.
Here's a closeup of the gun resting on the gravestone, together with two replicas of the badges Harry wore as captain of the Arizona Rangers and sheriff of Cochise County.
Following the reuniting of the little gun with Harry, the wife and I repaired back to Bisbee to toast his memory and that of my grandparents. We returned yesterday. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
John
I thought I'd share some pictures I took along the way.
First stop: Tombstone. This is the OK Corral, not far from the famous gunfight in 1881.
We hit Tombstone during their annual HellDorado festivity. Here are a couple of desperadoes who really look the part.
From the movie Tombstone:
The distaff side in Tombstone like being armed, also. Here is what one well-heeled damsel wore.
Here's a stagecoach waiting to pick up passengers -
We ate lunch at Cafe Margarita, 131 S. 5th Street. It used to be Nellie Cashman's place until about 3 years ago. Great Mexican (and Italian) food. Highly recommended. Here are a few local HellDorado characters chowing down there.
This is just an "artsy" shot of a back alley in Tombstone - taken while the wife was visiting a reptile museum (not much to my taste for things to do).
And then, on to Bisbee, farther south just 8 miles north of the border with Mexico. Bisbee is the southernmost mile-high city in the U.S. At the turn of the century, it was the biggest city between St. Louis and San Francisco, and the copper mines were in full roar. My grandfather was a mine foreman here; he and his men were "powder monkeys" - the guys who set the explosive charges underground. I gotta say that job took real guts. Here's the first view one gets of Bisbee coming in on U.S. 80.
Here's another overlook of Bisbee, with the "B" on Chihuahua Hill to the right. The Copper Queen Hotel, in continuous operation since 1902, is at the lower left.
This is Bisbee's town plaza at the easternmost end of Main Street. This is where Sheriff Harry Wheeler rounded up labor dissidents in 1917. He then marched them to a ballpark in nearby Warren, put them on cattle cars bound for the middle of New Mexico and told them never to come back. More about Harry in a bit.
Storm clouds were brewing as we stayed at the Copper Queen Hotel the first night.
That made for a dramatic sunset that evening. This is looking up Main Street; the combination post office and library on the left. Bisbee residents uniformly take their mail there; the post office will not home deliver - Bisbee homes are mostly located on hills, most of them accessible only by long stairways. My mom studied at the library here as a girl; she graduated from high school in 1929 and secured a one-year scholarship to Tulane University. She later graduated from Arizona State Teacher's College (now Arizona State University in Tempe). She worked as a grade school teacher and as a high school Spanish teacher for many years before retiring in the 1960s.
At dusk, the birds began to flock and roost in this tree in the Copper Queen plaza.
The next day, we had some visitors driving a couple of old Fords. Here are a couple of shots of them.
I've written about Captain Harry Wheeler before, but here's a summary. He held every rank in the Arizona Rangers between 1903 and 1909, finally becoming the captain of that rough and ready law enforcement unit. He then ran for sheriff of Cochise County (which includes Tombstone and Bisbee). He was elected to three successive terms. In 1917, the IWW was threatening to shut down the copper mines in Bisbee. This was during WWI, and copper was vital to the war effort. Harry was a red, white and blue patriot, and he was not about to let that happen. As mentioned, he rounded the agitators up, put them on cattle cars, and deported them to Columbus, New Mexico. He said he couldn't put 'em all in jail, so this was the next best thing. Once that was done, Harry resigned to become a Captain in the Army, and he journeyed East to board a ship for France. Before he did so, he bought a little Colt Model 1903 hammerless pocket pistol for self-protection. I purchased that very pistol not long ago, and I brought it to Bisbee to re-unite it for a few moments with its original owner.
Harry Wheeler is buried in Bisbee's Evergreen Cemetery, not far from where my own grandparents were later laid to rest.
Here is his grave, and I took a picture of it with the little gun he bought in early 1918.
Here's a closeup of the gun resting on the gravestone, together with two replicas of the badges Harry wore as captain of the Arizona Rangers and sheriff of Cochise County.
Following the reuniting of the little gun with Harry, the wife and I repaired back to Bisbee to toast his memory and that of my grandparents. We returned yesterday. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
John
Last edited:
