Tombstone is a former “boomtown” in southern Arizona near the Mexican border in Cochise County. The desert city is located about 100 km southeast of Tucson on the Arizona State Route 80.

The city was founded on 5 March 1879 by the geologist Edward Lawrence Schieffelin, who discovered silver sources in February 1878.

The village also received the name from him, because his friend and Scout Al Sieber, told him that he would find nothing there but his own tombstone.

The city counted in its heyday 15.000 inhabitants. Today there are still 1.600 people who live mainly from tourism.

A celebration of the founding day is held annually in April. Tombstone was around 1880 scene of several famous shootings, including the shooting at O. K. Corral with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on October 26, 1881.

At the cemetery Boot Hill find the graves of known and unknown victims of those times.

Today, the city is a tourist attraction with a traffic-calmed main street. It advertises the slogan “The town too tough to die” (The city that is too persistent to die).
Historic and historically recreated saloons convey the flair of an old western town that was the scene of many western films such as: My Darling Clementine.
We visited Tombstone on a Monday morning. Nobody was here, we loved it.