Tombstone Trivia

In June 1880, Philip M. Thurmond walked around the newly formed mining camp of Tombstone and asked for the vital statistics of every person he could find. Acting on a federally mandated census, Thurmond tabulated 2,170 residents from all over the globe including: Germany, Ireland, England, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Spain, Japan, China and South America; making Tombstone a very global village.

“The Ice Cream Saloon” was one of four ice cream parlors in Tombstone by 1881. How did they get the ice? There was an ice plant on Toughnut Street. In addition to ice cream, there were also telephones, a Tombstone stock exchange, and a wine bar—Kelly’s Wine House—that bragged of 26 wines imported from Europe.  Tombstone also had their own micro-brewery, five billiard tables and an indoor shooting range. By 1883 Tombstone had a municipal swimming pool, the first in the territory.

Attorney Wells Spicer wrote in 1880: “The town is not altogether lost, even if there is a population of 1,500 people with two dance houses, a dozen gambling places, over twenty saloons and more than five hundred gamblers. Still there is hope; for I know of two Bibles in town, and I have one of them (borrowed).”