Helldorado

by Ben Small

No, Helldorado is not the name of an Eagles' song. Rather, it's a three day celebration of Tombstone's wild and sordid past, complete with get-ups, stage coaches and lots of blank cartridges going off. Sorta like the old days, maybe, except this time the only missiles flying through the air are made of paper wads. Most everybody has heard of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. But that's just part of the Tombstone story.

Helldorado celebrates it all, from the discovery of silver to the shooting of Marshall Fred White by Curly Bill Brocius, the most notorious Southwest outlaw of his time. Johnny Ringo, arguably the fastest gun in the Southwest outside of Wild Bill, is also a main character. And then there are the Earps and Clantons, icing on the Wild West cake.

Most people are not aware that the importance of these events rose to such a level that three presidents -- two U.S., one Mexican -- got involved;  there was a threat of war, and permanent changes to our law enforcement structure resulted.

Yee haw.

While the truth is there were really no "good guys," in either the Earp or Clanton bunch, history, television and the movies have dictated that Wyatt Earp be crowned a hero and the Clantons, McLaurys, Curly Bill, Johnny Ringo and the rest of the Cowboys be branded villains. And there may be some truth to these labels, although there's plenty of exaggeration to go around.

Helldorado is the biggest event of the Tombstone year -- every year. Tombstone is a town that lives by tourism, and Helldorado is the best time to experience the best and worst of "the town too tough to die." Folks come from all over the country, don their getups and make-up and prance around, some participating in re-enactments of significant Tombstone events. Earp-alikes, Clantons -- descendants of the participants, still attempting to convict the Earps of murder -- and pretend Curly Bills, Doc Holidays, Johnny Ringos and John Behans abound. And there are period ladies, both proper and improper...if you get my drift.

    

And there are other characters as well, hundreds of them, all decked out in period costumes.

It's hard to tell how many people attend the three day Helldorado celebration. On the Sunday my wife and I were there, there were gobs of people, hundreds if not thousands, spread all over town. Unfortunately, my wife and I stood out: We wore tee shirts and shorts.

There are stagecoach rides, mine tours, good food in the local saloons, and re-enactments all over town.

Of course, no visit to Tombstone would be complete without a tour of the world famous Bird Cage Theater, one of the few original buildings left in its original condition, bullet holes, furniture, brothel rooms and all. All the great actors and actresses, from Lilly Langtrey, Sarah Bernhardt, Fatima, Eddie Foy, Lillian Russell, Lotta Crabtree, Florence Roberts, Richard Mansfield, Joe Bignon, Maude Adams, Margarita Silva and others played the Bird Cage, the nightly hangout for the Earps, Behan and the Clantons, and of course, the best brothel in town. The Bird Cage was where Wyatt slipped to when he wanted to escape his common law wife and diddle Sadie Jo Marcus, John Behan's eighteen year old girlfriend -- the runaway daughter of Neiman Marcus -- and later Wyatt's third wife. In her spare time, Sadie Jo worked in the brothel, both upstairs in the cheap brothel -- 20 bucks for the balcony room, more for the girl -- or the basement brothel with the double beds, where the room-and-girl rates doubled.

Sadie gave Johnny Behan this picture, which was only re-surfaced after Wyatt died.

One glance, and it's easy to see why Sadie didn't want Wyatt to see this photo. There was already enough bad blood between Behan and Wyatt stemming from Behan's political screwing of a trusting, naive Wyatt Earp. See, the feud -- and the events leading up to the great gunfight -- were really about politics. The Earps were the gambling, swindling Republicans, Behan and the Cowboys the cattle rustling, drunken Democrats, and at play was the lucrative position of Deputy County Marshall, the tax collector, who got to keep much of the tax-take. Earp dropped out of the County Marshall race upon Behan's promise to give him the tax collecting job, then once Behan was appointed, he named someone else, perhaps because of Earp's cuckholding.

Good times...

At the entrance of the Bird Cage hangs a famous painting of Fatima. If you look closely at her picture, you may notice Fatima has more than one navel. Yes, it was patched, but the bullet holes in the painting are still visible, a few of the one hundred forty bullet holes, many of them .44 caliber, lodged still in the walls, ceilings and floors of the theater. Many came from drunken patrons just having a good time, like when one drunk didn't like a song and put three rounds into the wall of the stage. But there were also gunfights, sixteen of them, and twenty-six dead patrons, not including those killed by brawl or knife.

Fatima

As I said, the furniture is original; everything inside the Bird Cage is original. So here is the Faro table the Earps owned, the site of the famous "duel" between Johnny Ringo and Doc Holiday, where Ringo twirled his pistol and Doc answered with a shot glass. Huckleberry, indeed...

Here's a picture of the interior of the Bird Cage, with a craps table in center in front of the stage, and the cheap balcony-brothels above. One can just imagine a drunken cowboy enjoying the show while he also enjoyed a bit of the nasty...

Along the walls of the Bird Cage are memorabilia of the times, pictures of those involved in the famous events of 1881. Here's a picture of Johnny Behan, and below that... Wyatt Earp.

After Tombstone, Wyatt lived with Sadie for the rest of his life. He died in 1929.

Heldorado is held yearly, in October, of course, the month of the great gunfight. As a growing city -- indeed the fastest growing city in the country during the 1880s, Tombstone had a short life. Ironically, Tombstone, a city with no water, became a ghost town after the great 1887 earthquake, which flooded all the silver mines. Still, its legacy lives on, and nowhere more so than during Helldorado.

And the Clantons now have a website. Doesn't everybody? Check here for their latest effort to once more win the argument who started the gun battle and who was at fault. It's a good read, even if their arguments still fall on deaf ears. Clanton Website

I invite you to come see for yourself. Helldorado is a throw-back to days gone by. And it's a rollicking good time.

A Much More Difficult Time

by Ben Small

I paid another visit to my friend John Weber just outside Tombstone. He’s the licensed rattlesnake hunter I mentioned in a prior article. But this time I went not for rattlesnake wallets, although I bought some for family members, but for his outdoor museum. John and I spent a couple hours staring at the implements he’s collected, evidence of the hard life experienced by desert settlers during Tombstone’s boom time. I also spent some time at Wyatt Earp’s house, a small two room house with no kitchen or bathroom. For meals, Wyatt and his live-in mate, had to cross the street to Virgil Earp’s home where family meals were cooked. That house burned down in 1998 and wasn’t rebuilt. It’s a vacant field now.

Here’s a section of Wyatt Earp’s wallpaper.













And here's one of Earp's buggies. Wyatt sold it when the Earps left Tombstone, and the not-for-profit that runs his house was able to track it and buy it back and restore it. Note: no shock absorbers.








Yuk. But Tombstone wasn’t a “feel good” sort of place in the 1880s, unless you were Ed Schieffelin and his partners, who were among the few who actually made money from the mines. They cashed in early for what now would approximate one billion dollars.
For the rest, Tombstone was, indeed, the “Town Too Tough To Die.”

These pictures show various tools used to de-horn and remove testicles from bulls. Evidently, from the number and variety of these in John's collection, this was a regular activity in Tombstone days. Don't know why I took pictures of so many of them. Maybe I identify with the bulls...









Here are some actual Tombstone posters which were nailed to posts throughout the town. These are the real thing, not something printed up post-period.



















Branding was the name of the game for both ranchers and rustlers in those days. Cattle were free-range, so branding was essential. Problem was the rustlers were excellent at making their own brands, which would duplicate an existing brand but add a bar or circle, so the rustlers could claim the cattle were theirs. And cattle farming or stealing was profitable; the miners needed food. So, naturally, John Weber has many brands, some of which are remarkably similar. While I've got pictures after pictures of these different brands, I'll just flash one for you.
















Of course, as shown by one of the posters above, Tombstone was a gun-free town, unless you were a Clanton or McLaurey and you wanted a gunfight over the issue. But outside town, hog-legs and Winchesters were essential tools. Between the Apache, rustlers and mine raiders, this was a very dangerous territory. John has some cartridges from the period.

Everyday existence in Tombstone was a struggle. There was no water; it was carried in from the San Pedro River via wagon and cost 3c/gallon. Ironically, water led to the closing of the mines in 1887, just nine or so years after the town was founded. The Tombstone silver mines were not closed because of the plunge in silver prices, as is commonly stated. The mines were flooded when a massive 1887 earthquake tore open a fault and part of the underground San Pedro flow streamed upward.

When a cattleman, miner or traveler had to spend a night in the desert, there was the issue of what to do with the horses? Unless one was staying along the river where large mesquite or cottonwood trees would provide a tie-up, the traveler had to carry the means for keeping his horse nearby. But the river was an especially dangerous area, because brigands, marauders and predators (mountain lions, rattlesnakes and bears) prowled the river banks. So it was much safer to sleep out in the desert. But how to tie up the horses? Here's an example of how that was done. The traveler would screw these posts into the ground and tie his horse to it.

















If you were a miner or a cattleman who caught a claim jumper or rustler, and you didn't shoot him, you had to have some way to keep the bad guy captive until the town or county marshal could take over. Here's one way this was done.


The miners were afraid to leave their mines, lest claim jumpers settle in, so the miner had to keep nearby all his pots, pans, tents, and mining equipment. So much like the movies, travelers during this period usually trailed a mule laden with all this hardware. Here are some of the things those poor beasts had to carry.











If you happen to travel to Southern Arizona, I highly recommend visiting John Weber's outdoor museum and rattlesnake crafts store. Admission is free, and what you see will leave lasting impressions. Contact John at http://www.rattlesnakecrafts.com/. You may recognize him; he's been on both The Today Show and PBS.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of the entrance to his museum. It's quite a place, and a reminder that no matter how tough we think times are now, they were much more demanding a hundred twenty-five years ago...



Note: Sorry for the dis-jointed positioning of some of these pictures. This was the best I could do given the limitations of Blogger.

Location, Location

by Ben Small



Part and parcel of a good story is the location chosen. I especially enjoy mysteries set in locations that offer historical, cultural or topographical oddities or curiosities, or those which will add interesting aspects to my plotting.

And I've found a gem this time, right in my own back yard. My next book, title as yet undetermined, will be set in the historic areas south of Tucson, the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers, the valleys they support and the Santa Rita Mountain Range which splits them. It was here that the first Spanish settlements arose during the 1500s, and it was along the San Pedro where Wyatt Earp carried out his vendetta against the Cowboys. In fact, close to the place where I took the lead shot for this article, Wyatt Earp shot dead the famous outlaw Curly Bill Brocius, leader of the rustling Cowboys, in a hail of gunfire. Back then, the term "Cowboy" was an insult; intended to refer to the murdering rustlers who invaded ranches in Mexico and the Arizona/New Mexico territories, murdered the residents, and stole their cattle or horses. There was no law and order back in those days, no jurisdictional respect or order between federal, county and local law enforcement agencies. County law enforcement was aligned with the rustlers, while the Earps were town and deputy U.S. marshals. Two U.S. presidents tried to remedy the outlaw culture, and the Government of Mexico threatened war, but it took Wyatt Earp and his brothers, not the most pleasant or legitimate characters themselves considering their gambling and prostitution interests, to clean up the mess. And at root, politics was behind much of the conflict, for the rustlers were Democrats, and the gamblers and pimps were Republicans.

How's that for consistency?

Despite the time difference between then and now, the 1880s mentality still remains. This is harsh country, and solutions to problems are sometimes direct and brutal. As was stated in the movie, Casino, there are many holes in the desert. I happened on one grave (Curly Bill?) where someone was kind enough to mount a cross. But many graves are unmarked, if remains are buried at all. Many bodies were and are left to the coyotes, mountain lions and the ever-present turkey vultures.


Back in the 1880s, this area was the Wild West.

Now it's just wild.

The San Pedro and Santa Cruz river beds, valleys, highways, and the mountains in between them are known as Smuggler's Alley, where trafficking in drugs, weapons and humans is most keen. Residents report finding live and spent 7.62 X 39 shells -- the kind shot by AK-47s, the smugglers' weapon of choice -- in their backyards. They hear gunshots and see people running.

The Border Patrol snatches over 800 illegals per day here.

Drive through this area during daylight, and you will see Border Patrol vehicles, lots of them, all shapes, sizes and types of them, and you'll pass through Border Patrol Inspections, both permanent and temporary. You'll see helicopters flying over, and you'll see people on mountaintops, watching, much like Cochise and Geronimo and their bands did here in the mid-to-late 19th Century. At night, you'll see flares, Kleig lights and flashlights. You may see flashing signals in the mountains. The Border Patrol will fly over, spreading their floods on hilltops or fields. You may hear shouts or shots, perhaps both.

The winds blow often, sometimes fierce and gusting; they carry strange sounds, conversations and activity from some distance away. But from where..? Tension grows as dusk falls. It builds...

At night, the desert comes alive. You hear rustling, the baying of coyotes, and sudden rushed movements, a struggle. A scream on the wind. Laughter? Terror? The air stills like it was snuffed, and you hear another rustle in a bushy mesquite nearby. You hear a shot, or was it a door slam maybe at the ranch next door? You analyze what you heard, decide there was a clang to it. Must be a door that took a breeze badly.

Be careful when you're between the valleys.

Here's a daylight shot from my car window, not far from the Santa Cruz.

If you look carefully, you'll see two people watching me from on top of a foothill five hundred yards away. I departed quickly, after I saw one of them raise a rifle through my zoom lens. I called the Border Patrol and gave them the GPS coordinates.

This is beautiful country along these two rivers, even when the rivers and streams are not running. Mountains, washes and game abound. The San Pedro valley is noted as one of the world's best bird sites.

But beware, around the next corner may lurk danger. If you're off the main roads, you may want to be armed.









Other risks affect folks in this area, too. Water, for instance. Green Valley and Tucson pull most of their water from the Santa Cruz watershed. The water table, which varies from several hundred feet from the surface to just a few feet close to the river, is declining, and groundwater and stream flow are showing increased levels of contaminates. The Santa Cruz originates in Mexico and flows north. Nogales, Sonora is a major industrial center, and it's pumping TCE laced water into the riverbed.

But there's more... This area, up from Mexico to Tucson, sees some of the most intense mining operations in the world. Gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, uranium and other minerals are mined and processed here, and these processes use sulfuric acid, arsenic and other heavy metals and poisonous substances. The chemical tanks, piping, seals and acid ponds sometimes leak. Tailings from these mines dot the countryside, creating huge toxic mounds saturated with these chemicals -- and radioactive to boot. This is open pit stuff, most of it, so the mountains are being scarred. And where tunnel mining prevails, there are problems with subsistence (sudden collapse of mine shafts). A collapsing mine channel may unpredictably divert rushing floodwaters during summer monsoons. You're in the mountains, and there's no soil to absorb rainfall. The ground is hard-pack. It, too, is mined, for Portland Cement and Cemex, the Mexican concrete giant.

The chemical runoff from these mining operations is contaminating the groundwater at ever increasing rates. And the areas close to the river, where the water table is closest to the surface, are prime farming areas. Take for instance, this pecan farm, where I'm placing Denton Wright's ex-wife in the new book, a horse rancher and pecan farmer. The farm is less than a mile from the Santa Cruz, so the water table is close to the ground.

As I was scouting this area, I came upon a copper mine just a few miles from this pecan farm. (Indeed, another one was across the street from it, an abandoned mine, but with the tailings pile still intact.) A big 'un, with enormous sulfuric acid tanks and holding ponds and a pile of tailings climbing to the sky. Huge ore trucks pass by, throwing up clouds of dust. The trucks are timed, so the dust doesn't become a fog, but when the wind is blowing, good luck.


Here is the tailings pile. You'll also note the hanging dust cloud from an ore truck that passed by some minutes before. The roads are paved with crushed tailings here, so you're traveling on radioactive roads through radioactive clouds dusted with sulfuric acid and arsenic.

Good times, huh?

Adding more fuel to the area's growing flames of discontent and concern, there's the proposal of a Canadian company to put a new silver, copper and moly open pit mine just south of Tucson, close to Vail, an incorporated suburb. The waters from this location feed both the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are currently conducting investigations that will lead to an environmental impact statement, but an 1872 federal law gives mining a preference over any other land development, and local residents feel bitterly that environmental concerns are once again taking a back seat to mining development. It's irony that this battleground is proceeding despite a severe downturn in materials prices, a decline that's laying off copper miners and closing many mines.

A lot of property for sale here...

So Denton's ex-wife is in the midst of this mess, trying to save her pecan farm and horse ranch, while dealing with the pressures of guarding against illegal trafficking across her lands. She lives north, in horse ranch territory, just west of the old McCartney Ranch, where Linda McCartney died. She lives two blocks from Tucson's only oasis, Aqua Caliente Park, where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday met the territorial U.S. Marshall, who informed them Frank Stillwell and Ike Clanton were waiting at the Tucson train station to murder the entire Earp clan. The shooting of Frank Stillwell thereafter, for which Doc Holliday was charged, was the beginning of Wyatt's famous vendetta. The Cowboys were destroyed.

The problems are great, the challenges greater, and the risks are real and apparent. Still, nestled at the foot of the Santa Catalina range, in an area twenty miles away from her farm and horse ranch, Denton's ex-wife's residence looks scenic and tranquil. Desert plants, especially saguaro abound underneath the concrete-like hard-pac. It's a desert jungle, thick with mesquite, chollas, barrel cacti, acacia, ocotillo, hopbush, paloverde, mexican jumping bean, chuparosa, canyon ragweed, Parry's penstemon and creasote. Sandwiched between two mountain ranges, the northeast side of Tucson, where she lives, sees double the rainfall of metro-Tucson. The mountains squeeze the water out of clouds passing through their slot like a wet chamois twisted in strong hands.








But looks can be deceiving...

Rattle Rattle

by Ben Small

Fooled you. You thought this was another L’il Ella story, didn’t you?

Au Contraire.



Yesterday, some friends and I visited a couple of rattlesnake hunters. How’s that for a different experience? Heck, if you’re gonna write a mystery where someone gets bitten or terrorized by a rattlesnake, you’d better learn something about them, eh?

Enter John and Sandy Weber, two Rockford, Illinois transplants, one of whom (John)
I worked with for a few years. Seems John got tired of corporate life and retired early – somewhere around 1977 or 1979, John can’t remember which – for a life in the desert.

Don’t think this is so strange. Wyatt Earp and his wife, after they left Alaska, spent three quarters of every year living in a wagon in the desert.

The Webers have improved on that a bit. They have two trailers, one for a shop, where snake-stuff and rocks are sold, and one for living. Both are a little beat-up, maybe, but John and Sandy don’t care. From the ever-present grins on their leathery sun-dried faces, they’re having a ball.

Finding their shop isn’t the easiest thing, and a GPS may not help you much, as I’m not sure their road, really a two mile driveway, is on the map. They’re located just south of historic Tombstone, off Gleason Road. All that tells you they’re there, except for a steady stream of traffic from people who found it once and are returning, is a dark wood sign.

The museum is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of John and Sandy’s activities. Through some thirty years of networking with ranchers, townspeople and targeting certain areas with metal detectors, John and Sandy have managed to pick up a wide variety of antique implements and weapons. Rusted mining tools, Tombstone gun barrels – wouldn’t you love to learn the story behind them – ancient plow shares, cameras, axes, pitchforks, bull blinders, saddles, and other historical items, plus rifles and pistols adorn their yard, centered by a fire pit and chairs. Looking at the surrounding mountains and rolling hills, and listening to the sounds of the desert, one can only imagine the peace and tranquility John and Sandy must experience in the evenings, except during August.

August is hunting season.

John and Sandy spend most of their August evenings from six to nine, searching for rattlers. And find them they do, the largest so far having reached eight feet. They use a three foot long snake-catcher. “Hey, I’ve got one of those,” I said, my chest swelling with pride, “except mine’s ten feet long.”

They laughed at me. “Three feet’s all you need,” John said. He turned to Sandy. “Ben’s turned into a city-feller.” And then they laughed again.

We talked quite a bit about snakes, how to find them, what to expect, the length of their fangs, how far they can stretch with a full-blown strike, and of course, how to catch them. But John and Sandy don’t do all the hunting. They know all the ranchers in the area, and the ranchers trade them snakes and items for the museum in return for some of John’s goods.
He and Sandy do good work. Need a snakeskin hat band, watch band, bracelet, belt, knife sheath or other snakeskin covered item, they can fix you up, and at prices you won’t believe. And they’re not limited to rattlesnakes, although they dominate the collection. There are also items covered with python skin, coral snake skin, and other varieties, often acquired by trading. Very quickly one realizes, John and Sandy don’t do this for money. They charge for their goods ― the museum is free ― but their prices are low. Besides, I know where John worked; he has a pension. They do this work because they love it. And after seeing their operation, I don’t blame them.

I’m not sure I’ve seen a happier couple.

So next August, I’m going snake-hunting...

Please come visit me in the hospital… And bring some money. Anti-venom is expensive, I've been told.

Check out John And Sandy's website at http://www.rattlesnakecrafts.com/about.html