Arizona -- Beyond The Tourist Traps Of Tough Old Tombstone

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. - If it weren't for tourism, Tombstone - ``The Town Too Tough to Die'' - would be as dead as the outlaws in Boot Hill.

Shucks, pardner; you can't even get into the dang graveyard without going through a gift shop that's been tacked onto one side.

Not far away from Boot Hill is the OK Corral, where the West's most famous gunfight took place.

Admission is a mere $1 to see life-size cutout figures placed ``just as they stood'' in the dust and tumbleweeds back in the fall of 1881, when Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday dispatched three members of the Clanton-McLaury Gang in a 30-second fusillade of lead.

Or, for a $2.75 ``bargain special'' ticket, you can not only see the OK Corral and its cutouts, but watch Tombstone history ``come alive'' at the Historama, get a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph that contains testimony of witnesses to the gunfight, and have a free drink of sarsaparilla in the Crystal Palace Saloon, where the infamous gunslinger Johnny Ringo (``a well- educated and cultured man when sober . . . a pitiless despot when drinking'') once hung out. All for $2.75!

Stranger, you can bet your best pair of boots - spurs and all - that Johnny Ringo would be one bewildered gunslinger if he swaggered today onto Allen Street, Tombstone's main drag.

Surely, the Wells Fargo R.V. Park would baffle him. The ``world's largest rosebush'' might be a little less befuddling, but you can be sure he'd steer clear of that; wouldn't do the image any good to be seen hanging around sniffing the blooms.

Of course, on a more practical level, he could have a steak at the Lucky Cuss restaurant, named for the mine that started the silver rush that gave birth to the town. Or he might down a shot and a big mug of beer at Big Nose Kate's Saloon, so called because it supposedly was once owned by Doc Holliday's girlfriend.

Or, like the rest of the strangers in town, he might just stroll through a few shops and check out what's for sale: turquoise jewelry, paintings on leather, hand-tooled gold and silver belt buckles, charms, geegaws, doodads and souvenirs of all sizes and sorts.

Tombstone is tough, all right; tough on the wallet.

But there is another truth here - the truth of what the town once was before tourism caught up with it, saved it and made it the town too tough to die.

Hang around for a day, or even a long afternoon, and you'll find it's still possible to see the rough edges of frontier Tombstone and adequate reminders that the six-gun spoke with authority here longer than in the rest of America. Arizona didn't join the union until 1912, the 48th state to do so.

Take, for example, Boot Hill - the first stop for many visitors because it is on the highway that leads down from the nearest big city, Tucson, about an hour's drive to the northwest.

The old graveyard is a lot like Tombstone in at least one sense: Once you get past somebody who's trying to sell you something you don't want or need, there's a lot of colorful history and character.

Here, it's the neat rows of graves, marked with placards and epitaphs staked deep into the earth (the original wood and stone markers were carried off long ago). The graves of Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury are among the first you'll see: ``Murdered in the streets of Tombstone, 1881,'' says the marker for the OK Corral victims.

But there are also the ordinary (``Pat Byrne, 1882, Pneumonia''); the tragic (``Delia William, 1881, Suicide''); the predictable (``Killed by Apaches,'' ``Shot'' or ``Murdered''); the not-so-predictable (``George Johnson. Hanged by Mistake''); and the kind that bring a chuckle to those fortunate enough to still be above ground and able to read: ``Here lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a .44, No Les, no more. ''

Those who think Boot Hill is still a bit too touristy can trot across town to the much larger Municipal Cemetery, where Tombstone residents have been buried for much of the last century, since Boot Hill filled up.

If you don't take kindly to starting your Tombstone visit in a cemetery, stop in first at the old courthouse, which is now a museum. The seat of Cochise County may have moved south long ago to the nearby town of Bisbee, but the soul remains in Tombstone, much of it in the courthouse, which was built at the height of the boom in 1882.

Here you will find a wealth of memorabilia of Tombstone in particular and the Old West in general: rifles and revolvers; reward posters and pictures of lawmen; prospecting and mining tools and equipment; photographs of frontier Tombstone.

There are the pictures of Wyatt Earp and his sidekick John Henry ``Doc'' Holliday, the latter so named because he was a graduate dentist, ``although it is agreed that he pulled more triggers than teeth.''

Still, there's not much left to Tombstone except for shops, restaurants and tourist traps, many of which have their own little museums in the back. They can fool you, however. It's often worthwhile paying the small fee when there is one - generally $1 - to get a look at the memorabilia inside.

Perhaps the most remarkable establishment is the Bird Cage Theater ($2 but worth it), Tombstone's most popular honky-tonk in its heyday, and an exceptionally well-preserved place. When the town's fortunes waned, the Bird Cage was simply closed and boarded up, and remained so for 50 years until it was declared a historic landmark and reopened in 1934.

Inside, there's a trove of treasures: the original Boot Hill hearse, made in Rochester, N.Y., and trimmed in sterling silver and 24-carat gold. The 9-foot-high backbar painting of the belly dancer Fatima, or Little Egypt, as she was known, complete with bullet holes (there are well over 100 bullet holes in the Bird Cage walls and ceilings).

And there's the bed ``used by girls of the Bird Cage,'' with this handwritten inscription: ``Some of the most famous characters of the Old West laid here. If only it could talk.''

Most remarkable of all are the ``cribs,'' cage-like rooms that line the second-floor walls on two sides of the saloon and dance floor, unused for a century but intact, right down to the glass windows.

Curtains were drawn when a lady was entertaining but opened when she was not, enabling the male patrons below to size up the possibilities.

Any afternoon of strolling Tombstone's main drag, Allen Street, once known as the wickedest street in the Southwest, yield nuggets from the past.

The bawdy-house calling card for Madame LeDeau's that says: ``Our recommendation: `Ask any man.' ''

Then there's the collection of rifles and shotguns in the Wagon Wheel restaurant on nearby Fremont Street. And, yes, even the ``world's largest rosebush.'' Although there is no testimonial offered to support the superlative, even Johnny Ringo would have to agree: It's a darn big bush.

Those who decide to stick around Tombstone into the evening will find decent, relatively cheap motels and similar accommodations and plenty of restaurants, specializing mainly in steaks and ribs. It's not exactly a gourmet town, but you won't go home hungry.