Hey, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and as you can
see behind me, even though some folks are quarantined or under stay-at-home orders
right now in other states, there's no shortage of people camping here on Lone
Rock Beach at Lake Powell. We're here for one night, we're on our way to
Tombstone, Arizona, so come along with us on this episode of Grand Adventure! Stay
tuned.
So, we love it here at Lone Rock Beach. We covered this way back in Episode 13,
so if you'd like to know more about this area on Lake Powell, the area around Page,
check it out right here on the screen. We'll put a link so you can go back and
watch that episode, the early episode number 13.
We're just here for one night, and I've got to tell you, it is refreshing to see this
many folks out camping. We couldn't get near the water if we tried,
unless we squeezed between, between a couple of other campers. I
didn't want to do that. We're only here for one night.
It's not going to kill me to be a couple hundred yards back from the water, so
we're going to spend the night here, get back on the road in the morning, and
head on down to southern Arizona to the area surrounding famed Tombstone. If
you're able to get out right now and you're not in an at-risk group,
plummeting gas prices are making this an excellent time to travel by RV.
So we made it to Tombstone! We are camped, we're boondocking in the Coronado National
Forest about 11 miles north of town. Almost all of that is dirt road. Ten of
those miles are on Middlemarch Road, and I've got to tell you you can get almost
any type of rig up here. That road is graded and it is so wide, I think you
could even land small aircraft on that thing. Yeah, the last half mile or so down
Forest Road 687 is a little narrower and a little rougher, however it's also
graded and we've even seen huge class A's back here, so there is plenty of room
to get almost any size rig. And there are a ton of different spots!
It's a beautiful site. It's right at the foot of the Dragoon Mountains, which have
kind of a unique place in history. At the northern end of the range, up around Dragoon
Springs not far from here, the Indian warrior Cochise actually engaged
two battles with -- believe it or not -- some Confederate war soldiers during the U.S.
Civil War. So it's kind of a neat history, in addition to the wonderful history in
the town of Tombstone itself, site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Now I know how
much you guys love when we bring you those drone shots, so let's get a bird up
in the air to show you around the camping opportunities right here along
Forest Road 687.
And if you saw our last episode on the Rover Roamer, we've got it hooked up here, just so I can tie
her up when I need to. It's working out like a charm. For more on the Rover Roamer,
click the link up on the top of the screen.
Tombstone's place in western folklore was cemented by the Gunfight at the OK
Corral. One of the last boom towns in the American frontier, Tombstone's population
grew from only 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven
years in the 1880s, thanks to local mines that produced $40 to $85
million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in
Arizona. Tombstone had a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, two
banks, three newspapers, and an ice cream parlor, alongside 110 saloons, 14 gambling
halls, and numerous dance halls and brothels. But there were tensions
simmering beneath the surface that boiled over in a deadly conflict. On one side
were the Cow-Boys, a loosely knit gang of ruffians committing crimes ranging from
border smuggling to cattle rustling. They were Democrats who sympathized with the
southern Confederate States. On the other side were the miners and townspeople,
largely Republicans from the northern Union States. After the Cow-Boys killed a
stagecoach driver and passenger transporting silver bullion to Benson,
tensions came to a head. Virgil Earp was the region's deputy US Marshal, and his
brothers Morgan and Wyatt Earp, along with legendary gun man Doc Holliday, were
temporarily deputized. Matters actually came to a head not at the OK Corral, as
legend has it, but instead in a vacant lot a short distance away on Fremont
Street. Some 30 shots were fired in 30 seconds, and when the dust settled, three
Cow-Boys lay dead in the dirt. Two months later Virgil Earp was
ambushed and seriously wounded in Tombstone by a hidden assailants. Less
than three months after that, Wyatt and Morgan Earp were playing pool
together late at night in a hall on Allen Street when a shot fired through
the window killed Morgan. Convinced that justice was out of reach, Wyatt Earp
formed a posse that hunted down and killed the four men he believed to be
responsible. Today, Tombstone caters to tourists
looking for a taste of the old Wild West. Unfortunately for bar owners and
shopkeepers in town, Tombstone is positively deserted during our visit,
thanks to the medical crisis currently sweeping the world.
Boothill Graveyard, where the three Cow-Boys killed in the OK Corral shootout are
laid to rest, is so named because most of those buried there "died with their boots
on".
So thank you very much for coming along with us to Tombstone Arizona! We're going to
stay here a few more days, and next week we'll bring you a glimpse at the nearby
town of Bisbee, a wonderful little arts colony and collection of historic
buildings right down near the Mexican border. So if you're not yet a Grand
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