These Dramatic Photos Reveal How It’s Always High Noon in Tombstone

Saddle up for a visit to the most notorious town in the West, where a certain infamous showdown happens day after day

Photographs by Cassidy Araiza

four cowboy re-enactors
Clyde Reese, Michael Jones, Evan Boatman and Cory Allen at a gunfight show last spring in Tombstone, Arizona. Cassidy Araiza

Past and present have an unusual relationship in Tombstone, Arizona. Men dressed as 1880s gunfighters are forever clomping up and down wooden sidewalks with jingling spurs and holstered revolvers on their belts. Women glide past, a mix of 19th-century bordello madams, shopkeepers and wives of wealthy burghers. Some of these costume-wearers are re-enactors who perform in the daily gunfight shows for tourists. But the majority are locals who are so enamored of Tombstone’s history that they habitually dress in Old West clothing. 

cowboys rehearse for a show
Bill Fortenberry and Bill Hiney rehearse ahead of an appearance at the Old Tombstone Western Theme Park, which hosts the town’s longest-running gunfight show. Cassidy Araiza
Cover image of the Smithsonian Magazine April/May 2025 issue

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This article is a selection from the April/May 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine

“We’ve got about 35 re-enactors in the shows, at least 100 regular citizens who get dressed up regularly, and more who’ll do it for events and special occasions,” says the mayor, Dustin “Dusty” Escapule, an affable man in his 70s who owns several businesses in this remote town of 1,368 people in southeastern Arizona. He doesn’t do period dress himself, preferring contemporary Western ranch wear, but he describes the vintage costume play as “part of the town’s appeal.” 

Evan Boatman, 13, is known for performing lively gunfights at the Saloon Theater on South Third Street.
Evan Boatman, 13, is known for performing lively gunfights at the Saloon Theater on South Third Street. Cassidy Araiza
Charlie Nohorse, a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe
Charlie Nohorse, a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, has been a standby on Allen Street for more than two decades.  Cassidy Araiza
Tombstone’s most important re-enactors prepare to stage the O.K. Corral shootout
Tombstone’s most important re-enactors prepare to stage the O.K. Corral shootout: Ethan Zazueta as Morgan Earp, David Moore as Virgil Earp, Todd Ste. Marie as Wyatt Earp and Aaron Snyder as Doc Holliday. Cassidy Araiza

On big holiday weekends, many of the visiting tourists get dressed up, too. It’s not unusual to see 150 Wyatt Earp impersonators strutting about in long black frock coats or drinking in Wild West-themed saloons like Big Nose Kate’s, where the female staff members wear 19th-century bordello outfits, and where the 1993 film Tombstone plays over and over on a big screen. In the hit western, Kurt Russell stars as Earp, the legendary frontiersman, and the movie climaxes with the October 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral—the most famous gunfight in American history, and the foundation of modern Tombstone’s identity.

A jaunty chihuahua named Wall-E
A jaunty chihuahua named Wall-E visits the town, sporting Tombstone-appropriate accessories. Cassidy Araiza
Bill Lee with his donkey
Bill Lee with his donkey, Jack, after completing a six-mile run in the Tombstone Desert Donkey Dash. Cassidy Araiza

Tim Fattig, a local tour guide and author of a 956-page biography of Wyatt Earp, stands outside the two-story Victorian courthouse on Toughnut Street, dressed in a brocaded vest and bowler hat. Of the half a million visitors who arrive each year, “nearly all of them come because of that gunfight,” he says. “It was really brought home to me when I met two Buddhist monks from Vietnam. They were wearing robes, they only had a few words of English, and two of them were ‘Wyatt Earp.’”

Cade McKechnie sits in a jail cell
Cade McKechnie, pictured with grisly company in a jail cell, has taken part in Tombstone gunfights since he was a kid. Cassidy Araiza

Mayor Escapule recognizes the central irony in Tombstone’s identity. The town became world-famous for a gunfight that lasted all of 30 seconds and did not even take place at the O.K. Corral. (It was actually in an empty lot behind the corral.) Moreover, townspeople at the time regarded the episode as an embarrassment. “We’re famous for gunfights now, but back then it was the opposite,” says Escapule, whose family has been in Tombstone for four generations. “We were renowned for sophistication. We had opera houses and theaters, and fresh seafood freighted in from California.” The Earp story, by contrast, smacked of frontier thuggery.

Andy Maldonado, a dashing Tombstone fixture known as the “San Antonio Kid,”
Andy Maldonado, a dashing Tombstone fixture known as the “San Antonio Kid,” corrals visitors to a gunfight. Cassidy Araiza
a tourist dressed as an old-timey miner
Tourist Randy Osman visits from Sierra Vista, Arizona, dressed as an old-timey miner ready to strike it rich. Cassidy Araiza

Yet Tombstone has learned that tourists are most attracted to the gunplay and lawlessness in its past, as portrayed and mythologized by nearly a dozen Hollywood films. The real history of the town, in which gunfighters played a very minor role, is harder to market and commodify, but it’s an extraordinary tale. Tombstone was one of the richest mining districts Arizona had ever seen, producing a prodigal fortune in silver and becoming one of the last great boomtowns in the American West.

In 1877, a tall, lanky Pennsylvania-born prospector named Ed Schieffelin made his way from California to the Arizona Territory. James McClintock, who published a 1916 history of the region, described Schieffelin as “the queerest specimen of humanity” ever seen in those parts: “His clothing was worn and covered with patches of deerskins, corduroy and flannel, and his old slouch hat, too, was so pieced with rabbit skin that very little of the original felt remained. … His black hair hung down below his shoulders, and his full beard, a tangle of knots, was almost as long and he appeared to be a fur-bearing animal.” Schieffelin was 29 years old and down on his luck. When he declared his intention to look for gold and silver east of the San Pedro River, where the Chiricahua Apaches were still “hostile,” in the language of the day, U.S. soldiers told him that all he would find was his own tombstone. Instead, he made a bonanza silver strike—and, in a defiant gesture, he named his first mine Tombstone. 

Boothill Graveyard
The sun makes long shadows of the crosses in Boothill Graveyard, a.k.a. the “Old City Cemetery,” where Tombstoners from all walks of life were laid to rest. Cassidy Araiza

A town of the same name was founded a few miles away in 1879, in a location previously known as Goose Flats, surrounded by scrubby, thorny, rocky hills. Despite the lack of a convenient water supply and the threat from the neighboring Apaches, it experienced a rapid increase in population and prosperity, all fueled by the silver and gold deposits in the surrounding area. Miners, prospectors, businessmen, professionals and financiers from California all flocked to the morbidly named city, along with cowboys, gamblers, swindlers, entertainers and prostitutes. 

A stagecoach
A stagecoach rolls down Allen Street, past the Campbell & Hatch Saloon and Billiard Parlor, which opened in 1880. Cassidy Araiza

At its height, Tombstone was highly cosmopolitan, drawing fortune-seekers from all over the world. Canadians numbered in the hundreds, as did Germans, Austrians, Mexicans, English, Irish and Chinese. According to an 1880 survey, Tombstone’s population also included people from Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Spain and South America. 

The Bird Cage Theater
The Bird Cage Theater, now a museum, opened in 1880 as a saloon and dance hall and quickly became the center of the town’s decadent nightlife. Cassidy Araiza

The town had been built in a hurry, without much concern for hygiene, and it was so infested with rats that it was hard to sleep. Tombstone chronicler George Parsons wrote in his journal, “The rats ran about us all night making great racket. … Rolled over on one in the night and killed him—mashed him deader than a doornail.” Cats were in high demand, because of the rat problem, and constantly being stolen. Parsons himself was fortunate to spot two cats on the way home from church one night, and he tried to capture them: “I was successful and hurried mine home anxious to get there before I was clawed or bitten to death. Peace tonight amongst the rats.”

A painting of Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp
A painting of Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp rests above a mantel at the Bird Cage Theater. Cassidy Araiza

By the mid-1880s, the population topped 10,000. In addition to 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls and innumerable brothels, the town had schools, churches, telephones, ice cream parlors, a bowling alley, a baseball field, an opera house and a high-toned French restaurant serving imported wines. A popular drink in Tombstone, belying its straight whiskey reputation, was the gin fizz, a fashionable cocktail with gin, lemon juice, sugar and soda water. 

Cheryl Bryan, in character as “Lily Devine”
Cheryl Bryan, in character as “Lily Devine,” readies herself for a gunfight re-enactment at the Saloon Theater. Cassidy Araiza

While the town prided itself as the most urbane, sophisticated place between St. Louis and San Francisco, drunkenness, gambling and debauchery, typical of any frontier mining camp, were the hallmarks of its nightlife. The Bird Cage Theater, which opened in 1881 and also served as a saloon and dance hall, is still standing and open for tours. The co-manager, with her husband, was a remarkable woman called Big Minnie Bignon. According to one popular fantastical legend, she once grabbed a pistol-waving troublemaker, carried him out the door and hurled him halfway across the street. Prostitution was legal and regulated, and its practitioners were known as “good time girls,” “ladies of the evening” and “ceiling experts.” One described herself as “horizontally employed.” Life expectancy was short for these women, because of venereal disease, the habitual presence of alcohol and drugs, and impoverished living conditions. Wyatt Earp, a gambler, bordello enthusiast and lawman who arrived in Tombstone with his brothers in 1879, signed the prostitution license for the Bird Cage’s Josephine Sarah “Sadie” Marcus, who would soon become his partner. Doc Holliday, Earp’s close friend and partner in the O.K. Corral gunfight, was a former dentist turned gambler and gunfighter; his girlfriend was a prostitute named Mary Katherine Horony, better known as Big Nose Kate.

Cade McKechnie sits in an outhouse
Cade McKechnie, son of the couple who owns the Old Tombstone Western Theme Park, began performing for audiences when he was just 5 years old. Cassidy Araiza

Yet most of the town’s residents didn’t frequent the saloons and gambling halls, and according to Fattig, “they wouldn’t have recognized Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday if they were dead on the sidewalk.” Silver was the real business of Tombstone, and the focus of its energies and attention. At least 50 mines tunneled into the hills. Many of them were engineering marvels, with state-of-the-art mills, engines and hoists. From 1879 to 1886, the Tombstone mining district produced $30 million in silver—around $1 billion today—making it one of the important silver mining centers in North America. 

The real bonanza period only lasted from 1878 to 1882. Then twin calamities struck: The price of silver slumped, and the mines flooded with groundwater when miners hit the aquifer. Mining companies installed enormous hydraulic pumps, but they malfunctioned and then caught fire. By 1890, the population had shrunk to 1,800. In 1900, fewer than 700 people remained. 

A cowboy re-enactor accepts a UPS package
A re-enactor accepts a UPS package on Allen Street in Tombstone on March 29, 2024. Cassidy Araiza

It could have easily become a ghost town, but in 1927 a writer named Walter Noble Burns created a sensation with his historical novel Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest, in which he transformed the disreputable and largely forgotten gunfight between the Earp brothers and the Cochise County Cowboys into a high-stakes morality play between good and evil; the Earps, in Burns’ telling, were essentially as pure as the Knights of the Round Table. Burns and other writers inspired by him put Tombstone back in the national consciousness and inspired popular movies like My Darling Clementine and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and TV shows such as “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” which aired from 1955 to 1961. When visitors started coming in earnest, in the late 1950s, the residents understood that tourism could save their beleaguered town.

The first gunfight re-enactments had taken place in 1929, and had attracted more than 6,000 visitors, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that Tombstone became established as a tourism destination. The historic district as it stands today came together in the 1980s: six eye-catching blocks of restored 1880s storefronts and a handful of original historic buildings. For the first time, costumed actors re-enacted gunfight shows daily. 

Dusty Escapule says his grandfather, who had mining and ranching interests, hated the Old West tourism. “He was mad because it ignored the respectable, hardworking people who built Tombstone,” instead putting all the emphasis on decadence and violence.

One of the main conflicts in Tombstone these days is among the re-enactors themselves. There are currently four gunfight shows, and each has its own costumed promoters soliciting customers. In 2017, following an overwhelming number of complaints from visitors and storekeepers about vulgar language and intimidation tactics, the city had to once again enforce an ordinance to keep the hawkers in separate areas. They were aggressively trying to poach each other’s customers, often insulting each other’s outfits as inauthentic. “They were constantly fighting,” says an exasperated Mayor Escapule, “cursing in public, shoving each other, getting into fistfights—grown men!”

a cowboy prepare some of their more acrobatic stunts
Bill Fortenberry prepares for some acrobatics. Cassidy Araiza
a cowboy does a handstand
Bill Hiney prepares for his acrobatic stunts as well Cassidy Araiza

Tombstone has a longstanding tradition of feuding and contentiousness, reaching back to the frontier days, and Escapule’s grandfather and great-grandfather, both prominent local citizens, had a theory to explain it. “They said an Apache shaman put a curse on this ridge, so that no two white men will ever get along here,” the mayor says. “I think the curse is working.” Besides the conflict among gunfight shows, Escapule says storekeepers often quarrel, yelling and filing lawsuits against each other, while citizens get into endless land disputes that keep the area’s lawyers and surveyors busy. 

Bill Fortenberry rehearsing for the gunfight
Bill Fortenberry rehearsing for the gunfight show at the Old Tombstone Western Theme Park on April 5, 2024. Cassidy Araiza

Tourism, the mainstay of the local economy, has recently opened up an unexpected new sector. Five different ghost tours are now available to visitors, and investigators like Bryan Harris of Goose Flats Paranormal consider the old silver town to be one of the most haunted places in the nation. “Our readings are off the charts,” he says. Tamara Ray, a California singer-songwriter who moved to Tombstone not long ago and started wearing vintage dresses, reports that she was drawn to the town by paranormal forces. “I can feel the spirits of those who lived here,” she says. “I would visit and leave, and they kept calling me back.” 

Another recent transplant is Evan Boatman, age 13, standing with his mother Rebecca on Allen Street. They moved to Tombstone a year ago from nearby Huachuca City. She is uncostumed, but Evan is decked out in a Reno hat, just like Val Kilmer’s in the movie, and a fringed suede and leather coat, with a replica Colt .45 in his gunbelt. “I love the history, the re-enacting, the dressing up,” he says. His passion for the history and pageantry has already earned him roles in the gunfight shows, first as silent characters—a bartender, a gunshot victim—and then as Billy the Kid at the Oriental Saloon Theater. “He’s the future,” says his mother as a horse-drawn stagecoach rumbles past. 

“I know one other kid who does this,” Evan says to me, with a seriousness beyond his years. “Most don’t care, but it’s important to us. We’re keeping the Old West alive.”

Editor’s note, April 15, 2025: This story has been updated to remove a reference to Wyatt Earp’s drinking habits that could not be definitively confirmed.

Cassidy Araiza is a Tucson-based photographer who focuses much of his work on the Southwest.

Richard Grant is an author and journalist based in Tucson, Arizona. His most recent book is The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi.

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