Southern Arizona’s ghost towns
The West remains wild in southern Arizona’s ghost towns and dusty deserts, said Paul Cloutier in Everywhere. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday once “strode down Fremont Street” in Tombstone on their way to a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Relics of the town’s “rowdy past” include Boot Hill cemetery and the Crystal Palace saloon, where the cardsharp Doc used to hang out. Bisbee, an old copper-mining town nearby, is less touristy. Built into the side of a mountain, it looks “exactly as it must have in its heyday,” with brick buildings seemingly stacked, willy-nilly, atop one another. One of the best-preserved ghost towns is Ruby, where the admission price pays to mend fences and fix buildings. More than 300 Westerns, including Rio Bravo and The Outlaw Josey Wales, were filmed at the Old Tucson Studios just outside town, in the cactus forests of Saguaro National Park.
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