Arizona republican., 1921-04-13
RUSH WAS b|G T0
 TOMBSTONE THE
 NEW ELDORADO

A picture of the sunny side of Tombstone in the boom days is here given by John A. Rockfellow. A. NJ. United States mineral surveyor. of Tombstone:
 Tt was my experience to be fer ried across the Colorado at Yuma, January 16, 1878. and proceeded by river to Aubry Landing and thence to the old camp of Signal arr1vinf almost on the day that Ed. Schief- felin and Dick Gird started out from there to find the rich district which was to be their tombstone.
 By April. word came to their friends at Signal that they had struck old Bronkow on the San Pedro riv- CT. Prospectors began leaving for the new find. but the real rush came later I left Mohave county with party bound for the big excitement the following December. We out 1 fitted at Blackberry and travelled over the old toll road to Prescott. thence by Black Canyon road to Phoenix. forded the Salt and Gila rivers. stayed through three days Of rain at Florence and reached Tucson early in January, 1879.
 | Prescott was then the capitol and was a gool live American town Phoe-
 
 and Florence about the same. Tue son was a foreign appearing place
 with church bells jingling every lit
 tie while. The business part of the town was Main and Meyer streets.
 with a portion of Congress street be-
 tween. All the talk there was of
 Tombstone and in the next two years Tucson became important as an out
 fitting point for the new district.
 The present town of Tombstone was laid out in the spring of 1879 and then came the big boom
 In January. 1881, Cochise county was formed from Pima county. with
 Tombstone as the county seat There were estimated to be 10000 peorIa | in the district and everything was 2 flying high
 } The Tombstone Mill and Mining
 company. organized by Arizona's loy- , al ex-governor (Safford) followed by 2 the contention Of Grand Central and others. had built mills on the San
 Pedro and were turning. out bullion x on big scale. paying big dividends , and making Arizona famous over the , entire world.
 , The Southern Pacific railroad. { which had been slowly building from 2 California into Arizona, began to re-
 alize the Value of the Tombstone dis s trict and rushed construction work 2 In May. 1881, they connected with p 9 the second transcontinentll route I The following August I took the e Demlng route east and spent some : tune in New York City. As soon as | l registered at the old Astor House , I was besieged by people anxious to
 learn about the new Eldorado e could give them facts and figures e but no one living could have given n true idea of the hummfng. boom- Y ing town filled with people living s under the stress of great excitement.
 doing their best to spend the money
 brought them by good fortune. Cap ! itailStS from the east came by tha
 score and bought anything in the
 shape of claims that were big enough
 to sink a shaft on, regardless of
 whether they showed mineral crop-
 pings or only bear grass and pricIllv
 pear. The men from the oil fields of
 Pennsylvania were especially good
 buyers
 Things were as lively and wide = open al midnight as at midday. The fsldewalks were so crowded that pe- destrians were forced to walk fin the middle of the street. The rival stages
 With six lively horses each raced in
 and out of town loaded with excited " passengers. Music was evervwhere ,r and dancing was to be found without :, trouble. Gambling games ran in tho if saloons, where they exchanged sum. 'e the total of which each day would
 look big to a Rothschild
 10 There was plenty Of the bad men . element but not in the proportion
 that some people ina zine. There
 was fine lot of mining and bushes. H men at the very inception of the towr ,i and in the end they were the win h ners Many brought wives and fam. = lilies early in the game and proved
 To De a credit to the community. in The old camp is only a shad dow SC man arl - out II ls sun on th' ,, precious metals. Some of the olr n, m guard are there and wish blessing, ur on all Arizona pioneers"