The gunfight

This week marks the 130th anniversary of the "Gunfight at the OK Corral" in Tombstone.

By way of celebration (seems like the wrong word), I recently read The Last Gunfight, by Jeff Gunn.

I won't take the time to review it, but Field and Stream does a decent job of reviewing it here: Book Review: The Last Gunfight.

Mostly, I like this review because it has the sentence, "Let’s start with the title. It wasn’t the last gunfight in the Old West, and it didn’t take place at the O.K. Corral, and it didn’t change anything, but it probably is the real story of this infamous and deadly 30 seconds, or at least as close as anyone’s ever going to get to it."

I did skip a few chapters in the book so I could get to the gunfight, but it does have some interesting information about the gunfight and the lives of those involved in the years after the gunfight.

For those of us in Southern Arizona, an easier way to commemorate this relatively minor bit of gunplay that has become so famous would be to take a trip to Tombstone, billed as the Town To Tough To Die.

In Tombstone, you can see regular reenactments of varying and fanciful versions of THE gunfight, as well as see some excellent museums, and my personal favorite, the Boot Hill Cemetery, which includes a guide to the cause of death of many of it's occupants.

Unfortunately, as the reviewer said, it was far from the last gunfight out here in the west.