Saturday opened up cool and breezy and since there was little for me to do until the Territorial Days Ball that evening, I decided to take a swing around town. Because this is not a holiday weekend, there were not a lot of tourists in town so getting around was relatively easy. Weather-wise, it was a cool 90 degrees with an occasional breeze which made things even more pleasant.
I stared out in one of my usual favorite places, the OK Corral. The exhibits here have been gradually upgraded and freshened over the past several years, making for a more visually pleasing experience. Of course, I had to first make a beeline for…
This is a modern reconstruction of CS Fly’s original photo studio and it was located in approximately the same location that the original was. Here’s a little of the interior which serves as an museum:
A reconstruction of the dark room…and here’s the studio where people posed for their portraits:
No doubt this plays a little fast and loose with how things were actually arranged but it gives the basic idea. Now for a little fun for the kids…
Moving on, I headed up Allen Street…
As you can see, town is a bit quiet today, unlike two weeks ago during Labor Day Weekend. 🙂
And yes, this is the modern City Hall for the Town of Tombstone. Finally, I made it to where some of the Tombstone Territorial Days festivities were being held (the field is actually part of the old Tombstone High School):
There were a number of activities going on to include Civil War era cannon firing demonstrations and a presentation called Reel vs. Real put on by Dr. Buck Montgomery and historian Lee Anderson where they discuss the contrast between what is presented in Western films and television versus the historical reality along with some demonstrations of various stunts. What was especially interesting is that working cowboys rarely carried guns on a regular basis and they did not use trick roping- they were practical and had no use for anything that made a job more difficult (when you work some 14 hours a day in the saddle, you’re simply too tired 🙂 ).
Here we see Lee Anderson explain how something really happened in the West…
Overall, it was a both educational and entertaining in equal measures and I greatly enjoyed it. Well, that my Saturday day, stay tuned for more. 🙂
