The News Herald Driving west on Middle Beach Road, you slip past the new Wal-Mart Supercenter, skirt the lush confines of the Edgewater Beach Resort, then suddenly find yourself at the edge of the American Frontier. In the middle of the Raccoon River Campground, which squats a few hundred yards beyond the Edgewater complex, lie the ruins of the old Wild West town known as Tombstone Territory.
Weeds surround the ravaged buildings, as if in siege.
Wind keens through glassless windows. There are no roofs. But only a generation ago, the Tombstone buildings were whole and its streets alive with wandering cowpokes and the jabber of gunfire. And just down the road from Tombstone was another Wild West city called Ghost Town, which boasted similar sound effects and visuals. In interviews, Hollis is even bound to suggest that a certain twisted illogic inhabited the core of area tourism back then.