Photo Essay: The Death Toll of Tombstone

Two years ago, I cancelled a trip to Deadwood, South Dakota merely hours before I was supposed to leave.

I'd lost a job and gotten into a car accident a couple of months before, and as a result, my bank account was empty and my brain wasn't right.

I'd even borrowed money from a friend to do the trip, but it turned out I really just needed that money to live.

So, in the midst of a full-blown panic attack, I backed out.

And while I initially felt relieved, I've been regretting the aborted trip.



So then I found myself on the Rental Car Rally to Tombstone, which is probably the next best thing to Deadwood—if not even better.



Both towns grew out of a mining boom—Deadwood, gold and Tombstone, silver. Both were lawless, capitalistic places of gambling and prostitution and gunfights and corruption.



A lot of people died in both Deadwood and Tombstone. Some were hanged at the gallows. Others were shot dead in the streets.



Not many died of natural causes.



The most famous—or infamous—of those buried at Boothill Graveyard are the McLaury Brothers and Billy Clanton, who died in a pistol fight at the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp and "Doc" Holliday.



But the markers of tragedy are everywhere in the cemetery: from George Johnson, who innocently bought a stolen horse to the unknown, unidentified, and forgotten.



Those that are marked "Unknown" might be Mr. Huggins who was burned to death, Rose Campion who died in childbirth, Thomas Harper who was hanged for shooting a man, or the man he shot, John Talliday.



Most of the graves date back to the early 1880s, but preservationists and historians thoroughly researched the burials to get an accurate descriptive list of the more than 250 grave sites here.



They weren't able to figure out every last detail—and some of the bodies weren't identified even when they were found, like the well-dressed man found at the bottom of Minute Mine, where he clearly had no business being.



But we know that Eva Waters died at just three months old from scarlet fever.



The daughter of Frank Bowles told the story of her father being thrown from a horse and accidentally shooting himself in the knee.



John Heath was hanged from a telegraph pole.



James Hickey was shot in the temple by William Clayborne after "over-insisting" that they have a drink together.



Something tells me that "Sudden Death" is a euphemism for how Mead, a blacksmith for Sandy Bob's stables, actually died.



There were so many horrible ways to die back then—like being ambushed by Mexicans while on a cattle drive, as was the case with "Old Man Clayton."



And sometimes, they're only remembered by a nickname, like the "Queen of the Red Light District," Dutch Annie.

Other horrors that befell the pioneers of Tombstone include being beaten in the face with a stone and trampled by horses and run over by wagon wheels, as well as consumption, diphtheria, pneumonia, nephritis, inflamed bowels, and overdoses.

But mostly, they were shot or stabbed or committed suicide.

As they say, death never took a holiday in Tombstone.

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Photo Essay: Glimpses of Arizona

It took me over five years to get to Arizona, after having moved out West.

And when I got there, it was all too brief.

We crossed the border into Arizona sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 on a Saturday morning, after having stayed up all night for the Rental Car Rally.

But we had much to accomplish while we were there: not only meet the naked owner of a local bookstore, but also get kicked out of a closed harness racing track for trespassing and hunt down some dome-dwelling ghosts.



It was after 6 p.m. when we finally got to the endpoint of our rat race, Tombstone—and although it's been a bucket list destination for me ever since I first heard the name "Doc Holliday," I'd have to wait until the morning to do any exploring.



And with only two hours for tourism before we'd have to hit the road back to California...



...we didn't get to see much.



So I tried to consider this brief visit more of a scouting mission—and it turned out to be a successful one, at that.



Unlike, say, Pioneertown or Calico, Tombstone feels like a real town—not a theme park.



And, in July, it felt like a ghost town. The summer heat is typically too hot for most tourists.



So we practically had the place to ourselves—and, without the crowds, were able to visit the Tombstone Courthouse State Park...



...a museum located inside the former Cochise County Courthouse, where you can examine original pieces of silver that were mined nearby...



...the gallows for hanging criminals...



...and, of course, the courtroom.



Besides the OK Corral, the most famous landmark of Tombstone is probably the Bird Cage Theatre...



...whose sordid history and fancy lighting fixtures have been amazingly preserved.



The Bird Cage was not only a theatre where the townsmen could catch a naughty show, but also a brothel whee  one of the women for hire known as the "Shady Ladies" would give them their own private sideshow in one of the opera boxes.



Downstairs in the basement gambling hall, amidst bullet holes and short-skirted women, the longest poker game ever to be played took place over the course of eight years, from 1881-1889. The table where it was played by such legendary figures as Doc Holliday is on display.



Of course, there's no tombstone without Wyatt Earp—and while we felt his presence throughout the town, there was no time to explore the historical sites that are devoted to him.



Instead, we had to get to Tucson for breakfast at Waffle House, where we got to meet the world's greatest greeter, Freddy.



We had to wash our rental car one more time before returning it...



...at the most beautiful car wash we'd ever seen.



And we had to return to Quartzsite, home of the nudist bookstore, to witness the site of the last camp of Hi Jolly, the country's first and most famous camel handler.



Hi Jolly is laid to rest here, with a monument to his work for the failed endeavor of the Camel Corps.



When the Civil War started, and the enemy was no longer a Native American, the Camel Brigade was abandoned and the camels were let loose in the Arizona desert around here to fend for themselves.



Thankfully, the camels were already used to the desert heat—because during the summer, it's so hot that pretty much everybody either leaves Arizona or just stays inside.



But we couldn't just drive back to LA without seeing something. Even if it was just the world's largest belt buckle.

In the end, my scouting mission was a success—because now I know how much more there is to see and do in Arizona.

I just have to find another reason to go back—and another person to share the driving with.

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Photo Essay: What's Left of the St. Francis Dam

What's left of the greatest American civil engineering failure ever? Of the second worst disaster in California history?

Some chunks of concrete, some rusty rebar, and a scar in the canyon wall.



The St. Francis Dam was built by William Mulholland (at that point, a widely-known, successful engineer for LA's water wars) in 1928 to wall off a reservoir full of an emergency water supply, as fed by the LA Aqueduct, which had opened 15 years earlier.  Mulholland's first choice in terms of location was Big Tujunga Canyon, but former LA mayor Fred Eaton priced him out of the area. Mulholland instead chose San Francisquito Canyon - at the time, out in the middle of nowhere, and, unbeknownst to him, on unstable ground.



San Francisquito Canyon Road was built to go right past the dam site through the canyon, past all of the rubble, but it was washed out in the early 2000s by rain, and thereafter decommissioned, replaced by a rerouted new road.



You can walk down to the dam site down this "Old" San Francisquito Canyon Road, which is now closed to traffic. Signs indicate a rock slide area. No kidding. (More on that later...)



Although the road has only been closed for a few years, nature is starting to take over.



It winds down the canyon, and starts to resemble a hiking trail, with tree overgrowth and an advancing dirt shoulder.



The road soon opens up to a curve...



...and as you follow the curve, you approach the original site of the dam, walking through the empty bowl of the former reservoir, which was once full of 12 billion gallons of water.



You soon reach a pile of rubble, the remains of the last standing piece of St. Francis Dam, a 200-foot tall piece of the center section that didn't topple with the rest of it.



Nicknamed "The Tombstone," that last standing piece became an eyesore, and an embarrassing reminder of the tragedy that hit the area: a wall of water, 180 feet high, which claimed over 450 lives (perhaps many more, given the undocumented immigrant workers camping nearby) and took everything - livestock, trees, buildings - in its path out to the Pacific Ocean.



Months after all the water had emptied from the reservoir, the Tombstone took the final life in the disaster's death toll: a young boy who'd climbed to the top, gotten spooked by a friend, and fell to his death. After that, the Tombstone was dynamited.



All that remains now is a lot of rebar...



...and a pile of rubble.



Some larger chunks of rebar-filled concrete remain...



...but the pile itself has dramatically diminished in size over the years...



...having attracted lots of hikers and looky-loos, who've walked on top of it...



...flattening it...



...and grinding its pieces into a fine dust.



Plants now sprout up amongst the remains...



...and pools of water collect in the shady areas behind the rubble.



It's hard to imagine what the dam looked like before it broke...



...but you get an inkling of its massive size, just based on how much concrete remains of just that one piece.



Although the remains are visible from Old San Francisquito Canyon Road (and can be hiked down to), to really understand the scale and positioning of the dam, you have to look up to each side, at each canyon wall, both of which bear the scars of the former dam.



On the west side, you can actually climb up a ridge to get a better view from above...



...where you encounter larger pieces of concrete that have disintegrated less, and retained much of their original integrity.



At the top of the steep ridge, you encounter the best-preserved section of the St. Francis Dam:



...the 588-foot long wing dike built to join the west abutment of the dam...



...in order to accommodate a ten-foot increase in the dam's height from its original 1923 plan.



The height increase was one of Chief Engineer William Mulholland's many decisions that may have contributed to (or certainly didn't prevent) the disaster's occurrence, though movement from an ancient Paleolithic landslide in the schist rock (along what is now known as the San Francisquito Canyon Fault) was the immediate catalyst to the dam break, moments before midnight on March 12, 1928.



On top of the ridge, you can look down into the basin below, through which San Francisquito Canyon Road (the new one) now runs, and imagine everything underwater.



You can walk pretty far out along the wall...



...which thankfully hasn't fallen prey to vandals and thieves.



If you turn right, you face south, and downstream from the flood...



...which carried with it giant chunks of the dam, some as far as a mile down canyon, some much farther.

Stay tuned for further exploration of the Old San Francisquito Canyon Road, and discovery of more pieces of the dam, farther downstream.

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