page_title: Ed Schieffelin
section_title: Tombstone founded
hierarchical_section_title: Ed Schieffelin / Hunt for gold and silver / Tombstone founded
caption_attribution_description: English: Stock certificate of the Consolidated Tombstone Gold and Silver Mining Company, successor to the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company founded by Ed Schieffelin, Al Schieffelin, and Richard Gird.
context_page_description: Edward Lawrence Schieffelin was an Indian scout and prospector who discovered silver in the Arizona Territory, which led to the founding of Tombstone, Arizona. He partnered with his brother Al and mining engineer Richard Gird in a handshake deal that produced millions of dollars in wealth for all three men. During the course of Tombstone's mining history, about US $85,000,000 in silver was produced from its mines.
context_section_description: When the first claims were filed, the initial settlement of tents and cabins was located at Watervale near the Lucky Cuss mine.  By March 1879, about 100 residents occupied tents and shacks at Watervale. Former Territorial Governor Anson P.K. Safford offered financial backing for a cut of the men's mining claims, and Ed Schieffelin, his brother Al, and their partner Richard Gird formed the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company and built a stamping mill. On March 5, 1879, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor Solon M. Allis finished laying out a new town site on a mesa named Goose Flats at 4,539 feet (1,383 m), to top of the Tough Nut mine, and large enough to hold a growing town. The town was named "Tombstone" after Schieffelin's initial mining claim. The shelters at Watervale were relocated to the new town site and a scattering of cabins and tents were quickly built for about 100 residents.
  During the first few months of mining, the upper portion of the Tombstone mining district was accidentally discovered by Ed Williams and Jack Friday. Late one night, their mules broke loose and dragging their chain, left the miners' dry camp for water along an Indian trail. The men tracked the mules' chain trail all the way to the Schieffelin camp. Williams and Friday noticed a bright gleam where the iron had dragged across bare rock. They filed a claim for their find, but Al and Ed Schieffelin and Richard Gird contested their claim, asserting it violated their earlier claims.  When the two parties finally resolved their arguments and counterclaims, they agreed to divide the ground. Williams and Friday took the higher end, which they called the Grand Central, and the Schieffelin company took the lower end, which they named the Contention in remembrance of the quarrel that led to its founding. Those two mines were eventually the most profitable mines in Tombstone. Some of the ore from the "Lucky Cuss", "Tough Nut", and the "Contention" mines assayed at around $15,000 to the ton.
  Ed Schieffelin preferred prospecting to running a mine and he left Tombstone to find more ore. When he returned four months later, Gird had lined up buyers for their interest in the Contention, which they sold for $10,000 to J.H. White and S. Denson, who represented W.D. Dean of San Francisco. The sellers thought the $10,000 price was exorbitant. The Grand Central and Contention claims turned out to be the richest claims in the district, producing millions of dollars in bullion.  The Schieffelin company also soon sold a half-interest in the Lucky Cuss, and the other half turned into a steady stream of money.
  On March 13, 1879, Al and Ed Schieffelin sold their two-thirds interest in the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company, which owned the Tough Nut mine, for US$1 million each to the Corbin brothers, Hamilton Distin of Philadelphia, and Simmons Squire of Boston. Safford became president of the new Tombstone Gold and Silver Milling and Mining Company with Richard Gird as superintendent. Ed moved on, but Al remained in Tombstone for some time longer. Gird later sold off his one-third interest for US$1 million, doubling what the Schieffelins had been paid. Gird remained in the territory but Ed Schieffelin left to pursue other interests.
  When Cochise County was formed in February 1881, Tombstone became the county seat. In 1881, early in Tombstone's rapid growth, Ed's brother Al built Schieffelin Hall as a theater,  recital hall, and a meeting place for Tombstone citizens. His great-niece Mary Schieffelin Brady reopened it in 1964 and it remains an attraction in Tombstone. It is the largest standing adobe structure in the southwest United States.
  At its height in the mid-1880s, Tombstone's population was officially about 7,000 miners, but some estimates figure in an additional 5–7,000 women and children, Chinese, Mexicans, and prostitutes. In the late 1880s, the silver mines reached the water table and the mines eventually filled with water. Tombstone's population faded, until tourism became its main attraction.
caption: Stock certificate of the Consolidated Tombstone Gold and Silver Mining Company
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