Tombstone

A couple of weeks ago I visited Tombstone for the first time. For a guy who loves the West and Western movies, the town bears the same mythic power as Camelot, Troy or Olympus. I believe the location should be treated with the same respect as Colonial Williamsburg or Gettysburg battlefield. The reality of modern Tombstone, however, falls a little short of the mythology. And that is a real shame.

I had a lot of book-learnin’ about Tombstone, but no experience. A couple of years ago I wrote A&E's BIOGRAPHY episode on Doc Holliday, and I read as much as I could about the town, the Earps and the OK Corral. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to visit the hallowed ground. So when we had a wedding invitation to Tucson, my sweet wife agreed to add a side trip to “The Town Too Tough To Die.” We only had an afternoon, but I felt that would be worth it. Jackleg historians know there is no better way to research history than to just find the place and walk around. You'll discover insights you could never get from reading primary documents and you'll see connections you never could have imagined even from first-person accounts. In the streets of a place like Tombstone, even a multiple-degree-carrying head of a major History Department becomes a Jackleg Historian.

Tombstone today is a strange place -- an uneasy mix of History and Commerce, with Commerce dominating. In fact, Commerce swaggers about the street, bullying bystanders and frightening the curious, like the Cow-Boys of old, and the whole place might benefit if a frontier marshal were to come in to clean up the town.

I have no problem with commercial aspect of historic tourism… but it was hard to find the History between the Commerce. Iconic Allen Street, site of the famous walk-down to the Corral, is a string of nearly identical tourist shops. They all seemed filled with the same cheap junk -- shot glasses and coffee mugs and t-shirts -- all apparently made at the same Authentic Western Curio factory in Guangzhou, China.

There were a couple of stand-out stores that were truly extraordinary, and worth the trip -- the Tombstone Western Bookstore, the antiques at Tombstone Mercantile and Spangenberger's Gun Store (now, oddly enough, called "Larry's Corner Store'). But between these were the ice cream shops and "old-tyme photos" and souvenir stands that all seemed to carry identical gimcrackery. I know that people need to eat – especially after a 90 minute drive from Tucson – and people want to buy stuff, so I don’t want to fault folks just trying to make an honest living.

But it's hard to hear the footsteps of the Earps, or feel the hot wind of a coming apocalyptic showdown when your eyes are ears are assaulted with cheap crap from China.

And apparently, I’m not the only one who is bothered. The National Park Service threatened to yank the town’s National Historic Landmark District designation in 2004 because the domination of Commerce over History was so bad. Some steps have apparently been taken… but at this point, it’s hard to see them. And if you have only an afternoon to see Tombstone, you could easily miss the historic significance of the place.

The high point for me was the "OK Corral Gunfight site" museum. By the time I got there, I wasn’t expecting much, especially since the site of the world’s most famous gun battle was a for-profit enterprise. But the museum has been upgraded fairly recently, and the "life-sized figures" (a little worse for wear) have been placed as closely as possible to the spot that Wyatt himself claimed they stood. A building called "Fly's Boarding House" stands next to the gunfight site (though it's unclear if it was the actual building from 1881), and in it stands a very interesting exhibit of Camillus Fly's photography and a replica of Doc Holliday's room. I was surprised at how un-commercial this section was -- the museum exhibit seemed professional, the descriptions and text (on the walls and in plastic handouts) seemed well-written and well-researched. It was a breath of fresh air – of real history – in a town full of t-shirt shops.

My favorite bit of Tombstone weirdness is the Tombstone Historama. Built in the early 1960s, it's not a movie... not a diorama... but a "Histo-rama." You sit in a small theater and the curtain opens to reveal a room-sized three-dimensional sculpture on a turntable. The first view is of ancient Tomsbtone, and spotlights pick out various details in the diorama. Some of the tiny figures actually move in a jerky, toy-robot fashion. Meanwhile, the inimitable voice of Vincent Price intones the fabled history of the town. Then a screen drops for a brief slide show, and when the screen rises, the Historama has rotated on its turntable to reveal another diorama. There are five scenes, and the entire show lasts about a half-hour.

I'm sure The Historama was a mind-boggling experience when it opened -- not too far off from Disney's "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" ride. But now 40 years later, the term “multimedia” refers to a million web pages, not herky-jerky robots and miniature dioramas. The literally-creaking scenery, the static displays and the bizarre voice of the long-dead Vincent Price makes the Historama more of an artifact than an exhibit. They've tried to spiff it up with some live action video (while the diorama loudly rumbles to its next scene) but the re-enactments are sub-par. I supposed the exhibit remains where it is because it is too big and ungainly to replace (and besides what would you replace it with?). And if you like kitsch (which I do), this is quite a find.

But The Historama is the default introduction to the town and its history… and it’s not a very grand introduction. My wife and I were the only people in the 50 seat theater. Meanwhile, cheap trinket stores proliferate… and visitors to Tombstone drop precipitously.

So I’m concerned that the American Camelot, the Gettysburg of the Old West, is being overwhelmed by the Cow-Boys of Commerce. Even though the town fathers are trying to beef up its historic draw, I fear that History is getting beaten and battered in Tombstone… and folks are staying away. After all, why drive all the way to Tombstone if all they offer is cheap souvenirs that you can get at the airport giftshop? The only reason to drive to Tombstone is the History. And that seems to be in short supply.