Legends of the Old West - TOMBSTONE Ep. 7 | Interview: Don Taylor & Mayor Dusty Escapule

Episode Date: September 22, 2018

In the final episode of Season Two, you'll hear from Tombstone city historian Don Taylor and Tombstone mayor Dusty Escapule. Don talks about the early days of the city; the fires that ripped through town in the 1880s; the gunfight at the O.K. Corral; and many more. Mayor Escapule's great grandfather was an early resident of Tombstone and there has been a member of his family in town ever since. And, Mayor Escapule's great grandfather is the man most often confused with Doc Holliday. You'll hear why... Join Black Barrel+ for early access and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Welcome to the final episode of Season 2. I have a pair of interviews for you in this episode, so it's going to be a supersized show to wrap things up. But before I introduce my guests, I have a quick programming note. At the end of episode five, I said there would be an announcement about a special limited series coming out this fall. Well, I've changed the plan slightly. I've decided to go bigger with it. I'm starting a whole new show called Infamous America. It's devoted to stories of some of the wildest, craziest, and darkest chapters in American

history. You'll probably know the basics of some of these, but I guarantee you don't know the full story. We're coming right out of the gate with the Salem Witch Trials for Season 1. Throughout October, you'll hear the tale of an infamous event that still lives on today. I promise you, this isn't the quick, watered-down version you read about in history class. Now with that said, here are the last two interviews about Tombstone. First up is Don

Taylor, the city historian of Tombstone. Trust me when I say, this series absolutely would not have been possible without him. He's a walking encyclopedia of Tombstone history. You saw him in one of our one-minute history videos and that was just a tiny taste. Walking the streets with him while he points at places and says, that's where this happened and that's where this happened was an awesome experience. Don's help was invaluable and I promise you I won't keep going on and on about it. His face is probably nine shades of red right now while he's listening to this down in Tombstone.

But seriously, thank you, Don. We covered a wide array of topics, including the early days of the town, some fun facts most people probably don't know, and of course, the gunfight. And Don got us access to Sheflin Hall for the interview, which was definitely a treat. That was the theater where Morgan and Doc watched a play Don got us access to Sheflin Hall for the interview, which was definitely a treat.

That was the theater where Morgan and Doc watched a play on the night Morgan was murdered. We sat right there, right in the front, right in front of the stage. Thanks again, Don. We'll see you for breakfast at the OK Cafe real soon. And after Don's interview, we'll be a short discussion with the mayor of Tombstone, Dusty Escapul. Mayor Escapul is a fourth generation Tombstone resident. His great-grandfather was there at the very beginning, and there's been an Escapul in Tombstone ever since. We talked about the mining history of Tombstone, as well as several other topics. But right off the bat, we dove into a really interesting one. So if you're listening to this, you've probably done what many people have done, including me.

You confused Mayor Escapul's great-grandfather with Doc Holliday. It's been happening for years. Find out why in the second half of the show. And now, here's Tombstone historian Don Taylor. All right, thank you, Don, for agreeing to be on the show. Here's Tombstone and some of the classic events but I'd like to hear a little bit more about the earliest days of Tombstone those nine months before the Earps got here and everybody in the wider world really started paying attention so what what was the town like what were some of the businesses what would someone have seen if they got here then? It was like any other mining camp. They all started out as tents. It was a canvas tent city. There was a two-story canvas hotel.

Some historians have said there were 110 saloons here at one point, but at that given time all you needed was two barrels and a plank and you had a bar. So it may or may not be true. It did not stay canvas very long at all. In fact, by the time Wyatt Virgil and James Earp arrived in December of 1879, it was already transitioning into brick and mortar or really adobe and wooden buildings and structures within the town. It was growing exponentially. Right, and one of the unique facets about how it was able to grow was that, of course, it is kind of in the middle of nowhere down here,

especially relative to where society was then. There were no railroads that came through. How did everything get down here? There was no secret that silver was in this area. But prior to Ed Sheflin coming here, the Cherokee Apache's were here. coming here, the Cherokee Apache's were here. Based on what I've found between 1542 and 1877, no white man came on this side of the San Pedro River because of the Cherokee Apache's. Some have have said that they were ruthless, cold-blooded, they were adapted to the high desert environment of this area. We're at 4,540 feet.

We're twice as high as Tucson, four times higher than Phoenix. And their home in the Dragoon and the Chiricahua Mountains was even higher. Their territory extended from New Mexico all the way down past Nogales in New Mexico. So yeah they were extremely protective. And there was one German immigrant mining engineer, Frederick Brunkow, who came down by the San Pedro in 1859. The 1860 census estimated his mine was worth $60,000 in 1860 dollars, and that's a lot of money. Unfortunately, the laborers he brought with him, they revolted, killed him, and two of his partners threw him down the well or down a shaft rather with a drill bit

through his chest. They stole the silver, stole the mining equipment, kidnapped the cook and let him go at the border. They did not kill him because he was Catholic. So there were some very violent days and even in the very beginning. Absolutely. Well, speaking of that, that's probably a perfect transition into the next topic I wanted to get to. Did you have something else you wanted to say? October 31st, 1875, I believe, is when Ulysses S. Grant signed the executive order to move the Chiricahua from their original reservation right over by the Dragoon Mountains up to San Carlos. But not all of them went. mountains up to San Carlos, but not all of them went. They basically balked because that was not the agreement they had. And so, yeah, it was dangerous for Ed to be down here, Ed Sheflin to

be here looking for silver. Originally, he would follow the patrols who were looking for the renegade Apaches. Sure. But they were going in different directions and not in the directions he he could see ledges of interest in the in the strata of the rocks along the mountains and so he finally started going off on his own and he'd get back to Camp Huachuca and the soldiers would say, did you find anything? He'd say, no, not yet, but I will. And the soldiers would laugh and say, the only thing you will find out there is your tombstone. But Ed had a sense of humor. His first claim he named the tombstone. The second and third were graveyard one and graveyard two.

Tombstone. The second and third were Graveyard One and Graveyard Two. Yep, yep, and I guess we're going to transition into a somewhat related topic. I wanted to talk about a couple of the gunfights that you told me about while we were taking our tour around town. Speaking of men who have filled some of those graveyards, tell me about the fight between Luke Short and Charlie Storms first. We got two of them we want to highlight here. The Earp brothers came to Tombstone with the dreams of opening a stagecoach line. They bought a stagecoach on the way to Tombstone. When they got here, there were already two stagecoach lines in business, and they were in a price war.

So they simply sold the stagecoach they had purchased, and Virgil went back to being the U.S. Deputy Marshal. Wyatt became the Wells Fargo shotgun guard. James became a bartender again. But Wyatt eased his way into gambling games and running and controlling interest in the gambling games. So he brought Luke Short, Bat Masterson in from Dodge City, and they dealt Farrow for him. And one night, Luke Short and another gambler named Charlie Storms got into it. They stepped out on Fifth Street between Allen and Fremont, and bang, Luke Short shot him right through the heart. Dr. Goodfellow, when he was conducting the autopsy, noticed that Storm's handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket

was actually pulled down into the wound. As he pulled the handkerchief out, the bullet fell out and it was pristine. Really? And the handkerchief was made the bullet fell out and it was pristine. Really? And the handkerchief was made out of silk. And that was the first indication Dr. Goodfellow had that silk may have bulletproof properties. And through other autopsies over the years, he discovered Billy Grounds that we saw yesterday at Boot Hill. He was killed out at a ranch nearby, shot by Billy Breckenridge with a double-barrel shotgun and double-op buckshot. And as Goodfellow undid the neckerchief around his neck, out fell the buckshot pellets. They had not penetrated his neck.

Really? He wrote a paper in 1885 that was published about silk being a bulletproof fabric, and later on that paper was read by the gentleman that went on to invent the bulletproof vest. He saw that article, went to Eastern Europe, and had a four-ply silk fabric woven for him there, and that's what he constructed to be the first bulletproof vest. It was demonstrated in Chicago. He put it on and had the police chief shoot him with a.32 from 10 feet away, and the bullet just bounced off.

So a doctor in Tombstone led directly to the creation of the bulletproof vest? Absolutely. Oh fantastic that's an unexpected and unexpected result. So let's go on to gunfight number two so Frank Leslie it's this is Frank Leslie versus Billy Claiborne and Frank Leslie seems like he was a quintessential cool customer in the old west. Frank Leslie came to Tombstone as Captain leslie he had no commission he had been a scout and he idolized wyatt once he got here he started dressed like him went to work for him but after wyatt left town frank stayed and he kept dealing ph Farrow and tending bar in the Oriental Saloon. And one day there was a political discussion going on between two men, and Billy Claiborne was drunk.

He interrupted on several occasions these men trying to hold their discussion, and finally Frank Leslie threw him out. Well, Billy went and grabbed a Winchester, and right outside the Oriental was a fruit stand. And so he's crouched down behind the fruit stand waiting for Leslie to come out the front door. People saw him and went in and told Leslie that he was out there waiting on him. And Leslie just simply grabbed his pistol, walked out the side door in the back, stood right on the sidewalk and hollered, Hey, Billy. Claiborne turned around and fired twice.

Leslie fired twice and hit Claiborne right between the heart and never lost his cigarette. It stayed lit, and he kept puffing until the deputy came and took his pistol. And of course he was exonerated. It was self-defense. Yeah, cool customer. And if I'm not mistaken, he had a fondness for buckskin. Was that correct too? Is that part of the legend or do we know if that's true? That's how he was dressed when he got here. Having been an Army Scout, he played the whole, the whole role, role of having whole role of having the buckskin outfit. But that soon changed as soon as he met Wyatt Earp.

Sure, sure. So while we're talking about Wyatt Earp and gunfights, obviously we have to go to the kind of granddaddy of them all. So the audience has heard the whole series at this point. They've heard the basic version of the gunfight at this point. They've heard, you know, the basic version of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. What are the most common misconceptions about that gunfight? And I'm sure there are a slew of them, especially if you've been watching all the films over the years, but what are the most popular ones? We don't have to get into every scene of every movie,

because certainly there are some outlandish recreations of it, but what are the most popular reconceptions that you hear as the city historian of Tombstone? Back in the old west most gunfights were usually one-on-one. Nine out of ten times they were so drunk they never hit each other. They'd shoot all their bullets and then realize how close they came to dying, shake hands and keep drinking again. shake hands and keep drinking again. This was basically a small skirmish. It was a battle on public streets. In fact, for 50 years, that gunfight was called the street fight on Fremont or the Fremont street fight, not the gunfight at the O.K OK Corral because it never happened at the OK Corral. It was in a vacant lot between Fly's Boarding House and William Harwood's home that locals here would use as a shortcut from Fremont Street to the OK Corral through a small alleyway.

That day it was cloudy, cold, blowing rain and snow. Not the beautiful, sunshiny day it always is in Hollywood. Virgil was in his shirt sleeves. Frank McClowry was wearing overalls. Not very gunfighterish. None of the Earps had holsters. When Behan said he had disarmed the Cowboys, Virgil and Morgan put theirs in their pants, cross-draw style. Wyatt had a special pocket made in his Mackinaw coat that was leather-lined, and that's where he put his gun. It was an event that had huge ramifications, but at the same time, there were huge consequences as well. What were some of those consequences?

Later on, one of the misconceptions, and it's always shown in the movies as a misconception, and for the most part, don't understand the inquest. The only reason the inquest took place is because the coroner's jury, 12 men, refused to either support the Earps and rule it was justified or support the Cowboys and rule it as murder. or support the cowboys and rule it as murder. They were afraid of both factions. So they didn't reach a verdict. Then it fell back to an inquest held by Judge Spicer, well, Spicer. And that inquest lasted 30 days, not just a few days like the movies portray it. Anybody who was anybody that saw anything testified. One of the more unique aspects of that, Wyatt's attorney, Thomas Fitch, had been the attorney for the Southern Pacific

Railroad, quit that job to be Wyatt's lawyer. Who paid him, we don't know. Wyatt didn't have that kind of money then. But he found an obscure territorial statute that said that the accused could read a prepared written statement that was not subject to cross-examination, and that's what Wyatt did. Yeah, it was brilliant. Pissed off the prosecution, which by its own right, Will McClowry, the older McClowry brother, was an attorney in Fort Worth who had come here to help the prosecution secure indictments against the Earps and Holliday. No conflict of interest at all. Huge misconception is people claim that Doc Holliday started the gunfight because they said they heard two clicks. And everybody assumes it's him because he had two hammers on a double barrel shotgun. But in Wyatt's statement, he said he and Billy Clanton fired the first shots almost simultaneously.

That agreed with a lot of the other testimony. There was one loud report, a pause, then the fighting became general. And what has to happen before you can fire two single-action pistols? Click click. Right, right. And so working through those events, so there was already notoriety for the town of Tombstone. Obviously the gunfight itself was big news. The inquest afterwards, the hearings afterwards were big news, and it only got bigger as the wider world was able to read this, because of what reason? Revenge. Revenge. In January of 1881, John Clumb had joined the brand new Associated Press,

and everything he wrote prior to and subsequent to the gunfight went to San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, New York. Everybody knew what was going on here. Everybody knew how dangerous the cowboys were. The outlaws almost started another war with Mexico. I have a copy of a letter from the Governor of Sonora threatening war if the United States government doesn't do something about the outlaws. In Chester Arthur's first address to Congress as President, December 6, 1881, the Cowboys took up a page and a half of the speech. It was that big of a deal. So yes, there

was a huge, huge impact. At that point in time, old man Clanton was killed August 13, 1881 in Guadalupe Canyon. He was running the outlaw group. After his death, Curly Bill Brocious ran things on the west side from Charleston. Johnny Ringo ran things from the east side out of Galeyville. They were an early form of organized crime. They intimidated everyone. They would get arrested. They would be charged, get arrested, but no one would testify. Does that sound familiar? Chicago 1920s. Same exact thing. It's just 40 years later. Yeah, they intimidated everyone, including the district attorneys. So yeah, the cowboys went after them.

Virgil was ambushed walking from the Oriental across Fifth Street toward the Crystal Palace by Ike Clanton and several other cowboys. They found Clanton's hat with his name in it, but yet he had the alibi from his brothers saying that he was in Charleston playing cards. So no charges were ever filed, and Doc Goodfellow took care of Virgil that night and the arm was so badly damaged he had removed six inches of bone from the arm and Virgil was never able to use it again. Then on March 17th, 1882, Wyatt and Morgan were in this very building. Where we're sitting right now. In Sheflin Hall to watch the play Stolen Kisses.

After the play, they walked back to the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Allen Street where they were staying. And Morgan said he wanted to play pool with Bob Hatch at Campbell and Hatches. And Wyatt tried to talk him out of it, but Morgan was headstrong and went ahead and said, I'm going. Wyatt actually started to get undressed, and then a little voice in his head said something was wrong. He got dressed and went down to Campbell and Hatch's. Alongside the wall by the pool table was a gallery, chairs,

where observers could watch the game. That's where Wyatt was. And when the shots came through the back door that severed Morgan's spine, there were also shots that hit the wall right by Wyatt's head. They were after both of them. they just missed. That began what we know today as the Vendetta Ride and Wyatt killed Curly Bill Brocious, Indian Charlie, Florentine Cruz, and Frank Stillwell. Stillwell was the first. He killed him at the train station in Tucson as they were putting Virgil on the train. And another point that people misunderstand a lot,

James took the body of Morgan back to Colton, California on one day. The next day on one day. The next day is when Wyatt took Virgil and the wives up to the train station in Tucson for them to go to Colton, California. He knew he couldn't protect Virgil in town, so he had him leave. In the meantime, the youngest brother, Warren, had joined them here in Tombstone. He had been here, left, came back for the Vendetta ride, and then left again when they left in April. But yeah, there was two different nights and two different trains, not all at the same time that they left. A lot of people try to make out that Wyatt Earp basically just committed murder, killed him on cold blood. He was a U.S. Deputy Marshal.

He had warrants in his saddlebag. They may have been blank, but there were warrants in his saddlebag. Ironically, as he left town, one of the judges told him here that the only way he would get justice is if you leave him in the brush. And he did. Right. However, an eye for an eye was an accepted practice in the 19th century.

So once that news and that classic Greek drama exploded throughout the newspapers across the country and he got his revenge, he was a rock star. He was known everywhere. It was a celebrity he would not want later on in his life but yeah he was he was called upon later on and one occasion to go back to Dodge City yeah for Luke Short yeah and Bat Masterson was there so was several several other gunfighters showed up and they were known as the Dodge City Peace Commission. And it's one of the most famous photos. But, yeah, it was something that haunted him all of his life.

Yeah, I thought that was one of the more interesting points of Casey Tiefertiller's book, who by this point the audience will know was a major source of information for this series, that he said that Wyatt never understood why everyone cared so much about this stuff. It was pretty normal to him. His brothers were attacked. All of the things that happened here, he needed to go find these people and get revenge on them. He could understand why the rest of the world was so fascinated with it and why he became a celebrity for it. He was the only Earp brother that was never shot. He had no explanation for that. He did dictate an autobiography, which unfortunately the publication of it has been very limited. It's poorly written. But in it, it's almost like he's talking about a guardian angel on his shoulder,

but it was really more like a sixth sense, which obviously they didn't have that phrase back then or that terminology. But yeah, he knew where the danger was and when it was going to strike, and he always seemed to avoid it. And I think that haunted him as well, knowing that he was the only brother not shot. And knowing that, again, James did not participate in any of the gunfight or the vendetta ride or any law enforcement. He was wounded in the Civil War. I've never really

been able to find out specifically what it was. I believe it was a shoulder wound that kept him from pursuing the family business, if you will, of law enforcement. And I read one account where he did come running up the street after the gunfight with a shotgun in his hand. Whether that was true or not, I don't know. Great. Well, let's move on. I think we've done a great job covering a lot of those different types of things with the Earps and the OK Corral. There's two more topics that I want to get to before we kind of wrap it up with a fun one.

As I mentioned before we turn on the microphones, when we were at Deadwood a couple months ago, I found it interesting, the similarities between the two towns. Deadwood went through two devastating fires. So did Tombstone. So as we really make a hard pivot here away from the Earps and the O.K. Corral and the really famous stuff, tell me about the destruction that happened when the two fires tore through Tombstone in the early 1880s. That's what's so great about Tombstone, Arizona, is it's got so many stories. The town itself has its own story. Wyatt Earp lived here for 28 months.

That's it. Tombstone existed before and long after Wyatt Earp left. 28 critical months in Tombstone and Cochise County history, but yeah, it was just over two years. In June of 1881, right outside of saloon between 5th and 6th, a bartender went to check a barrel of whiskey to see if it had soured. And unfortunately, he stuck his head in the barrel with a lit cigar in his mouth and boom, it blew up. It did not kill him. He survived. And yes, he joined the fire department after that. But it basically destroyed the main part of the downtown business district on Allen Street.

One of the most fascinating things about this is the town was rebuilt in 90 days. The town was rebuilt in 90 days. As the Timbers were still smoldering, they were sorting the adobe bricks as to which ones they could reuse and which ones they couldn't. But there was so much money here. $37 million in 1880 dollars worth of silver was mined here in the first mining boom. That's 825 million dollars today. So interestingly enough the railroad didn't come here till 1903. So all these building supplies, all the luxuries, all the toys, all the fashions, all the food, all the whiskey was brought here by wagon.

Again, because there was so much money here. Right. So there's no way that a little fire like that was going to stop production here. Absolutely not. And again, the place was rebuilt bigger and better. After the second fire, the second fire started in the water closet of the Tivoli Hotel, which was a small hotel behind the Grand Hotel, right in the middle of Allen Street. How it started, we're not really sure, but again, it blew more or less northward towards Shefflin Hall, the Gerd Block, the Miners Exchange, all of that. The post office was located at the corner of 4th and Fremont. They blew up the post office to create a fire break and keep the fire from crossing Fremont Street. and keep the fire from crossing Fremont Street.

And the Nugget newspaper, which was the Democratic newspaper, that was destroyed at that time and never started up again. Again, as those timbers were smoldering, they're sorting the bricks again. And within 90 days, it was rebuilt. The city did change the building code after that second fire. If you wanted a two-story or three-story building it had to be 100% adobe, no wood. So therefore, and they had the dimensions written out in the ordinance of how big the bricks had to be for the first floor, how big they had to be for the second floor, and for the third floor, so it was structurally

stand up. And so yeah, and that's the tombstone people see today, is basically the one after the 82 fire. Everything is really one story, and they're adobe buildings and uh it's not quite as luxurious if you will or uh maybe as fashionable but much more functional and much more resistant to fire right right well let's let's let's wrap up with two more. One more, I want to have you rip off some of the fun facts of Tombstone. Some of them people have heard in the episodes, others are going to be new and really cool. So I want you to just tear through a few of those before I hit you with the last one. Okay. Another one of the fascinating things about life here in the 1880s. By 1883, there were two gas companies, three water companies, two ice companies, five ice cream parlors. They had fresh seafood here every day. They would catch it in Baja,

California, pack it in barrels of salt, ice, and seaweed at dusk, freight it by train to Benson or Contention City, immediately offload it onto wagons and get here before dawn every day. Out west of town was the horse racetrack. On the infield of the racetrack was the baseball diamond. Tombstone had a baseball team from 1882 to 1929. And they rarely, rarely lost. Telephones were installed in the city of Tombstone in 1882. And in 1883, the oldest swimming pool in Arizona was built here in Tombstone, Arizona,

at the north end of Fifth Street, and it's still there today, and we still use it. Still operational, yep. Except we don't have a man with a shotgun to make sure you shower before and after you get out of the pool. I mean, it wouldn't be the worst idea, but probably frowned upon at this day and age. So yeah, it's just amazing. Like I said, the town itself has its own biography. Yeah, it absolutely does. Far more than, yeah, I mean, obviously you could do an entire series on just the town itself. I chose to do the kind of classic version that we all hear right now,

but try to weave in some of those things. But yeah, man, if you want to really know about the history of Tombstone, certainly plenty of books out there that will give you the full history. They're great. Through the years, it's interesting. It's always found a way to reinvent itself. And it fit in with the entertainment genre of the day from the dime novels to the to the the 20s and books that's when most of the books started to be written in the 20s 1929 they had their first adventure in tourism and they called it helderado Days. They invited back 400 of the original pioneers, and 343 came.

And it was a wonderful celebration of Tombstone's 50th birthday. Unfortunately, the first day of Helderado was Black Thursday in 1929, when the stock market crashed. Fox Movietone Newsreels was here with Pathé Films with sound and movie crews. John Klum was here. George Parsons was here. Billy Breckenridge, Behan's deputy was here, along with these other pioneers. But I talked to an archivist for Fox in New York, and he just laughed and said, I'm sure that film's gone, man. It probably never made it to the theater. So we lost the opportunity to see and hear these people. Then, after World War II, came the movies. Highly inaccurate, but extremely entertaining.

Yes, exactly. That's probably the best way to put it. 28 movies have been made about Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, or the gunfight, and they're all wrong. Yeah, but entertaining, like you said, too. They're still fun to quote. So I want to wrap up with this one last thing. That might be a perfect transition for it. So what is your favorite story about Tombstone or the Earps or the OK Corral that is not true? Oh that's not true. Yeah. Red Sashes. Okay So straight out of the movie Tombstone? I hate the red sashes. Kevin Jarre found an Oscar Wilde quote

and it said that the American cowboys were like the pirates of the prairie. He gave them red sashes and we've been stuck with it ever since. You know, I kind of wondered about that as I recently re-watched the movie again for the fun of it and kind of remember how they did certain things. Obviously, the red sashes are a big thing. And having worked in the film industry for several years previously, I started thinking,

okay, if I was a screenwriter and I had to identify who these people were to the audience, and one of the classic problems of the actual time period was you couldn't identify one of these cowboy outlaws. They looked just like like everybody else so if there were a lot of them populating this town and i needed an audience to know immediately who these cowboys were i would give them some kind of identifying feature like a red sash so that's that's how i assumed if that whole thing came to be if they had done it um if they had portrayed the population as they really were, the business people up town dressed to the nines, man. I mean, because the Earp brothers were gamblers and primary interests were gambling games, they wore black shirts, white ties, black hats, white shirts,

black hats, black, you know, white shirts, the whole thing. That's what gamblers wore. Doc Holliday was a professional man. He was a dentist. He wore charcoal gray, pastel colored shirts. He never dressed as a gambler because he was a dentist. He was a professional man. But they would have, it would have been easy to tell the cowboys because they would have been dressed like cowboys. But then nobody would have believed that the population of Tombstone dressed the way they did. I mean, they had every fashion, every, if it was in Paris or in San Francisco, it was here. Again, there was that much money much money so yeah i think we'll probably wrap it up there thank you very much for your time and for all your help again with the entire series i'm sure we'll be talking to you again down the road great we're looking forward to it

and now here's the mayor of tombstone dusty escapul all right mayor escapul thank you very much for joining the show we appreciate you taking the time to talk about your family history and some Tombstone history. Well, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you folks coming down and taking the time to look into Tombstone's history, my history. You know, as you probably have heard, I'm a fourth-generation native of Tombstone.

My great-granddad, John Escapul, which you may have also heard, has often been mistaken as John Doc Holliday. So they look very much alike. And he was published for years as Doc Holliday. And in fact it was the historian at the time, who's Ben Trawick, discovered, hey, this is not Doc Holliday. This is John Esquipel, not John Holliday. So I think they've corrected it all, but there may still be some in there. All right. Yes, I thought that was one of the more fascinating, I guess, mistaken identities that I started that I started learning about when I started doing research here. I, like everyone, had seen this photo of who I thought was Doc Holliday.

If you do a search right now online, I'm sure many of our listeners have done this search to see what Doc Holliday looked like. One of the first pictures that will come up is your great-grandfather, actually. And it was somehow a piece of mistaken history in the Tucson Library or Tucson Archives or something. I'm not sure where it originated from. However, it was a fly photo that C.S. Fly took. And I think it was maybe even a photo that included my great-grandmother and my great-uncle John. Okay. So they, you know, it seems they just cropped that part out and it looked just pretty much like Doc Holliday. Right, right. And nobody really caught it.

As I say, Ben Trewitt caught it. Ben's a very astute and excellent historian, as is Don. Right. Yeah, we'll try to post a picture of your great-grandfather along with some of our content so people can see exactly who we're talking about. I guarantee when they see the photo, they'll think, oh, yeah, I thought for years that was Doc Holliday. And now we know that it's Mayor Dusty Escapul's great-grandfather, John. Yeah, and there's actually one great-grandfather, John Escapul.

And John Escapul, he migrated here primarily because he was doing a story for the San Francisco Chronicle. Okay, yeah, I wanted to hear the story about how he got here. Yeah, he was doing a story on the boom of the Southwest and the capture of Geronimo. Okay. And he ended up at Camp Huachuca, and this was in 1877, and that's somewhere in there. And it was about the time that Ed Sheflin had discovered one of the first major claims here in Tombstone, i.e. the Tombstone claim is what he named it. And they became pretty good friends. My great-grandfather spent about three or four

months, I guess, you just, you know, these are stories passed on from my great-granddad to my granddad. But anyway, I spent some time with him and he told my great grandfather, he's John, he says, if you wanna go finish your story, do what you're doing, you come back through, I'll have it all, we should be in the shape where I give you a contract. And he gave him a contract to haul timber in from the Chuka Mountains, the Cherokee Mountains,

and the Dragoon Mountains for the mines. Okay. And so my great grandfather went back to California, liquidated everything he had there, bought a bunch of mules and necessary equipment, came back, and that was in 1878, I think, is when he actually ended up back here. So his first major job here in Tombstone was working with or for Ed Sheflin. He had a contract with Ed Sheflin. with or for Ed Sheflin? He had a contract with Ed Sheflin. As I said, Ed Sheflin had the first major strike was the tombstone and then they hit another one. They called it the graveyard.

And actually to talk about the mines a little bit, they really thought that they'd mined them out. They thought in the mining terms it petered out. This vein had died died so they were getting close to actually pulling out and saying that's it we can't continue on and then this is the story that i that's been passed down uh ed shefflin and his brother al shefflin were out and they were hunting but al shefflin had the gun ed had had the pick, and he's always prospecting. And I guess about the time Al had shot a deer, well Ed said he stuck his pick into what the

richest claim he'd ever seen, and he says, hey Al, look what a lucky cuss I am. And they named it the Lucky Cuss Mine. And it was the first major producing mine in the Tombstone District. And it was actually mined clear up into the 30s. My great uncle, Joe, was the mine foreman for this company that mined it. And then there was a number of other mines. Yeah, yeah. I've read about several others that popped up, both through the Sheflin family and obviously other people who came down.

Well, yeah. The next one he did was the Tough Nut. And he always said there was always a reason why he named it a particular name. The tough nut mine, which is fairly close to the Lucky Cus, it's on a different kind of geological structure. But he said, boy, this has been a tough nut to crack. So he called it the tough nut. And then he had another one, well, this claim is good enough, so he called it the good enough mine.

There was another set of claims back south of us, which ended up being the contention in the Grand Central. And Sheflin had staked those claims, and then they got into a legal battle as to who the owner was, because there were some other fellows came in, they staked it. And so they ended up, and they divided the claim into two claims. One was called the Grand Central, which these other fellows ended up with, and Schefflin had the Contention Mine. And he named it the Contention because of the contention that he had in keeping the mine. Yeah, exactly. But there was a number of mines. Tombstone was a big pruning town for, I guess, until about 1900 is when it started the first time it.

Right. The first boom was 1877, obviously, when those first flames. And then toward the end of. It did die down after 1877. And I think it was 1889, somewhere in there. And then there was a man that was a, I don't know if he was a promoter, whatever, but his name was E.B. Gage. And E.B. Gage came in and he consolidated all the tombstone mining claims.

Every one of them. And he called it the Tombstone mining claims, every one of them. And he called it the Tombstone Consolidated Mines, and he raised enough money to actually sink a shaft that was 10 foot by 25 foot by 1,000 foot deep. And they put their first big steam pump in at the 500-foot level, which is about where the water level is. And they made it clear down to the 1 the 500-foot level, which is about where the water level is. They made it clear down to the 1,000-foot level. The boilers were being fired by coal, and they were having trouble pumping from the lower levels.

So they figured if we had fire with crude oil, we could have a better steam, it'd last longer. So they actually put in a railroad track, put in a railroad to do that. And I believe it was 1903 when they completed the railroad. Story has it, and I'm not sure our city historian could probably verify it, but their first shipment of crude oil that they expected to come in ended up being saltwater. Really? Somebody, I don't know, they don't know if it was sabotage or just how it happened and he may, you know, they may know this the story as to how how that

happened, but it did happen. And ultimately, Tombstone Consolidated Mines went into bankruptcy. And the majority of it, I guess, was bought by Bunker Hill Mining Company, which is a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge Corporation. And they kept it up into the 30s. But getting back to my great-grandfather, Ed Sheflin gave him a mining claim. It's south of town here, about three miles. And he named it the State of Maine because he had this fellow, I think he was named Dunbar. Dunbar was an investor in mines and he was an investor. So Dunbar put the money up to get the mine going, and so they called it the State of Maine because he was from the State of Maine.

The State of Maine mine produced over three million dollars between 1890 and 1900. And my great grandfather was a very wealthy man. He owned the LTI Ranch from the Dragoon Mountains to here. He owned the Lucky Hills Ranch, which is all the way around here. He also had a ranch in Mexico and one in Texas. And the one in Mexico, they ultimately lost that. There's a story and it, well it's not just a story, it's a fact. There was a time when there was a drought and everybody needed to do something with their cows. So all of the ranchers, my great-granddad, or my granddad at this time,

my granddad, my uncles, the Cowan Ranch, the Bennetts, they all took their cattle and gathered them up and took them to the ranch in Mexico because it was a good big ranch. Problem is when they decided to bring them back into the United States, they found some of them tested positive for hoof and mouth. Okay. Hoof and mouth, they didn't want that to come back into the United States because it could wipe out herds and herds. coming back into the United States, they didn't, you know, because it could wipe out herds and herds. Sure. They paid them two cents a pound, bought all their cows, and shot them, and slaughtered them in the ditch, and covered them up.

Oh my gosh. So it really put all of the ranchers in Cochise County, or at least in the Tombstone area, in a bad position financially. But, and at that time the Depression was going so it was a lot of a lot of hard times i attend but the family's been able to make it through these hard times for for centuries were there any particular particularly fun stories that were handed down well you just told me a couple of but like what are some of the the nuggets that were passed down well there's one story that my my great uncle john used to tell me all the time about these fellows broke out of the county jail up here and come down to my, you know the story, I'm going to tell. Came down to my great-grandfather's house and stole my great-uncle's pony that he just got for his birthday and one of my great-granddad's good horses.

Stole the horses and left. John Slaughter was the sheriff. He come by and asked my great-granddad if he needs fellows. Yeah, they just took my two good horses. Stole the horses and left. John Slaughter was the sheriff. He come by and asked my great granddad if he needs fellas. Yeah, they just took my two good horses. And so about three days later, John Slaughter brings it back and this was at the Lucky Hills Ranch and he brings the horses back and they walked the guys back up to the county jail and put them in. And it wasn't long after that they broke loose again. This time they go back down and stole two more horses. And when they caught them this time in the Dragoon Mountains,

they asked them, how come you go to Escapoles? He said, well, they got the best horses in the country. That's why we go there. Yeah, keep raiding the best. Yeah, so that's a story that was passed on for years. Another story that my granddad used to talk about during the 30s, a guy by the name of Walter Lombardi owned the Crystal Palace at the time. And it was just neighbors, you know, just people. There wasn't a lot of people here.

But Lombardi told my granddad he was working cows. He pulled up his tightest horse up there by the Crystal Palace and went in and Lombardi told him, hey, you know, you better hang around. We're going to have a roulette game this afternoon. And the grandpa said, I haven't got any money with me. I've got to get back home anyways. Well, I'll lend you five dollars. You know, five dollars isn't a lot of money.

And the grandpa said, all right, whatever. Well before the day or the night was out lombardi had given him so many ious that he gave him the deed to the crystal palace oh my gosh and uh so grandpa used to tell me this story all the time and he says i didn't want to know gosh darn bar and i didn't use that sure quite that language but He's a little more colorful about it. Yes, he was. Lombardi told him, he said, well, I'll pay you back $100 a month until I pay off the debt. He says, okay.

But the deed was recorded from Walter Lombardi to Ernest B. Esquipo for four years and then recorded back to Walter Lombardi. And he used to tell me this story. I say, yeah, sure, Grandpa, sure. But when I had the mind going up here, we were doing a lot of research on title searches and various properties because, and I'll talk about TDC, Tombstone Development Company, here in a minute, but we found the deed, and I said, I'll be gosh darned. So I made copies of it, and at the time, Grandpa was close to, he was close to being on his deathbed, and I took it out, and I said, is this it, Grandpa? Yeah, my God, that's it, right there.

So it did, something to that effect did happen. Yeah, it did, yeah. So I guess I have to ask the last question. So were there any stories handed down through the generations of the most famous era of tombstone history, from the 28 months of the Earps and Doc Holliday? Yeah, there's a story that when Billy Clanton was killed, he had $82 or something like that on him. And so according to my granddad, my great granddad had hired him to break some horses. And that was the money he'd just paid him for breaking those horses. Really? Yeah.

The money that was in Billy Clanton's pocket. When he was killed at the gunfight. Yep. Was from your great granddad who had paid him to break some horses. Right. All right. Yeah. him to break some horses. Right. All right. Yeah. And, uh, you know, uh, my great aunt and uncle owned the OK Corral for years and years. Okay. Um, and my great granddad died right there at the Harwood house. Uh, he was in my aunt and uncle lived there at the time and they, uh, but yeah, it's right. Your aunt and uncle lived at the Harwood house there, essentially right next to the vacant lot where all this happened? Exactly. Where I was staying this morning, where we've been there numerous times over the last couple days.

Right. That's incredible. Yeah, they lived right in that little house and that's where my great-granddad passed away. Sometimes it seems odd, you know, we're talking about the violence of today, and it's a serious situation all across the United States and around the world. Violence, people getting killed. It's ironic that we make our living by people that got killed in the streets of Tombstone. Yeah, exactly. But that's the nature of the beast.

People have different ideas about different times and different things. And we do what we need to do to make the town keep surviving. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this and telling us about your personal history and the town of Tombstone.

We thank you very much and we'll hopefully see you again down the road. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to give it a rating

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