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Stepping through the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, there’s a sense of history colliding with the American imagination that is as heavy as its oak bar columns. It’s possible to drink here and wonder if the whole story of Western settlement can be crystallized by 17 violent months that happened in the still-dusty streets outside the door. 

The carnage that erupted between October 1880 and March 1882 later inspired countless films, though the one my brother Mark and I couldn’t stop watching was 1993’s “Tombstone.” Beyond iconic performances from Val Kilmer, Kurt Russell and Sam Elliott, the way it framed Wyatt Earp and his brothers as law-and-order manifestations of the pioneering ideal — and the loose-knit gang of ranch renegades they fought against as the opposite — completely dominated our imaginations. Mark identified with “Tombstone” so much that all through high school his nickname was “Wyatt.”  

Our fixation made us eager to see the real Tombstone. Of course, Mark made it there first. He ended up raising an eyebrow at scenes he found pretty inauthentic. That meant my recent trip there was haunted by two questions: Can the country’s “last great boomtown” act as a treasure vault of the past without becoming a Disney-fied cowboy theme park? And does the fascination we have with Tombstone’s lore say more about the legacy of Hollywood than the grit the Earp brothers showed against “the cowboys” during their gunfight at the O.K. Corral? 

The Oriental Saloon, once owned by Wyatt Earp, is a good spot to look for answers. With walls adorned in mounted boar heads, iron smoke wagons and Victorian paintings of pale women relaxing in parlors, it effortlessly evokes the rough mystique of Tombstone’s halcyon days. Unfortunately, the Oriental also insists on augmenting this atmosphere with live “entertainment.” 

Through the bar’s curtains in the old gambling hall is a makeshift theater, where men portraying Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and a bevy of lesser-known Tombstone figures reenact shootings that once took place in or around the Oriental. These sketches are melodramas played for laughs. A few blocks down the way, at the O.K. Corral, black-powder detonations constantly rock the city as visitors flock to reproductions of its defining showdown. Those aren’t played for laughs. It’s this costumed noisy spurs-and-holster that tends to annoy history fanatics about the state of Tombstone today. 

The city’s classic cemetery garners its own suspicion. There’s 42 shooting victims buried under Boot Hill’s cactus-studded sand, a resting place with sweeping views from the high desert to a blistered range of mountains. It is transporting. But it’s also a graveyard that fell out of use in the 1890s and became a total ruin by the Great Depression. That’s caused plenty of consternation about the layout of its wooden markers. A good number are restorations based on local memory. So is anything in Tombstone what it claims to be? 

Researchers throw that same question at the public’s notion of the Earp Brothers. That’s because every combatant involved in this settlement’s range war is now largely defined by the movie “Tombstone.” 

After spending time in the city and carefully studying its records, I realize why the film has its cultural staying power. Screenwriter Kevin Jarre focused on some well-documented realities. First, the cowboys were absolutely a gang that inflicted numerous crimes against Mexican people across the border, not to mention killing Tombstone’s town marshal in 1880. 

Secondly, as the movie suggests, Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday had enough experience with frontier violence before arriving in Tombstone that they just weren’t intimidated by the cowboys like everyone else. Whatever the reasons, in the end, three Earp brothers and a half-suicidal dentist-turned-gambler walked out in Tombstone’s streets and stood up to some hardened marauders’ sense of impunity. That’s what the 1993 movie captured so well, a story of sheep dogs facing down wolves — those “fit but few” who are willing to take on the bullies. 

Fueled by Tinseltown magic, that story will probably always be relatable. But the bleak truth is that the cowboys exacted a terrible revenge for the O.K. Corral. They did this by springing nighttime ambushes in Tombstone that killed Morgan Earp and permanently crippled Virgil. And if there’s any experiential witching rod left for the city’s real history, it’s tied to that bushwhacking under blackened skies. 

Walking the streets after sundown, once visitors retreated and the ghost tours ended, I could feel the blood price that comes from going after a town’s tormentors. I sensed it though a menacing aura in darkened corners — an imprint of something sinister still alive in the unsettling shadows. It made me wonder if my brother and I would have done what the Earp brothers did and risk what waited in these veiled streets on the edge of the wild. I came here looking for relics of Western heroes. I found inner-mirrors from the memory of the dead.  

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