Bon Ton and Tony by Sherry Monahan

Cochise County was created in 1881 when a portion of Pima County was annexed, which included the exploding silver boomtown of Tombstone. Ed Schieffelin discovered silver in 1877, and in 1878 the first mine started work. Tombstone quickly became a thriving silver mining community, and its mines peaked between 1879 to late 1882. During this pinnacle, the mines produced, on average, over five million dollars annually in silver and gold. Some of the larger mining companies paid an average of six hundred thousand dollars in dividends annually.

Despite its high-desert location with dusty wind and dry conditions, thousands flocked to the bustling town. First were the miners, prospectors, and investors. Once word got out that silver was plentiful, tents popped up along the mines, and many fortune seekers descended upon Tombstone. The tent city quickly turned into a town with adobe brick and wood buildings. A cosmopolitan town began to emerge as houses, hotels, banks, mining offices, saloons, gambling halls, brothels, and dry good and mercantile stores. Once women started calling Tombstone home, churches, schools, and millinery shops opened.

Some of those women carried the last name of Earp. They included the “wives,” some with proven marriage records and others who claimed to be married and went by Mrs. Earp. Despite a piece of paper—or lack thereof—these Earp women were considered wives during the Victorian era. They acted no differently than other housewives of their day. They cooked meals, washed and ironed clothes, made beds, swept floors, played games, wrote letters, and took care of their husbands. They didn’t involve themselves in politics or their husbands’ business affairs. For the most part, they followed their husbands from town to town and did what they were told. It’s easy to imagine all of the Mrs. Earps as glorified madams or gun-slinging sidekicks to their husbands. It’s true a couple did fit that profile, but most were just ordinary women looking for love and stability.

The Earps ended up in Tombstone because of Virgil. While in Prescott, A.T., Virgil sent letters to Wyatt and James in Dodge City, Kansas, and to Morgan, who was in Montana. Allie remembered the fall day in 1879 when Virgil’s brothers arrived in Prescott. Virgil came running into the clearing to see Wyatt and his wife Mattie and James and his wife Bessie, along with her teenage daughter Hattie, from Bessie’s previous marriage. They were told that Morgan and his wife Louisa were coming in from Butte.

Since space was limited in the wagons, the brothers and sisters-in-law spent two days planning and discussing what could be taken and what had to stay behind. From horse tack to basic household items, sacrifices had to be made. Items like Allie and Bessie’s rolling pins were laid side by side so the best one could be selected. Even though Allie’s was made of fine-grained hardwood, and made by hand from a neighbor, it wasn’t as symmetrical as Bessie’s, so Allie’s was left behind. Bessie had a large commode, and Allie remembered it taking up a lot of space and “not bein’ any good.” Allie’s prize possession was the sewing machine Virgil had given her and the first one she ever owned. It was large, so Virgil told her she had to leave it behind. Allie being Allie said, “All right, Virge. Leave it behind. I’ll stay with it.” She recalled there being a long silence at that moment until Wyatt broke it. He came over and said, “Oh, we can get it in some place.” Allie also recalled him saying under his breath, “but I don’t know where.”

It turns out Allie’s fight for her sewing machine proved financially beneficial. When they got to Tombstone, the town’s population was exploding. In June 1880, Tombstone’s population was about two thousand, which was a little more than double from the previous year. Items like water, food, and cloth were expensive. Allie recalled, “Everything was nice if you had money, but we didn’t, so it wasn’t.” Allie, along with Wyatt’s wife, Mattie, put Allie’s sewing machine and their skills to good use. Since Allie was one of a handful of people who had a machine in town, she began sewing for people in Tombstone. They charged one cent per yard and even made a large tent from a canvas for one of the new saloons. Allie said, “With double rows of stitching on that, we like to got rich.”

While Allie and Virgil never got rich in Tombstone, they did manage to earn some money. They attended an occasional play at Schieffelin Hall, but mostly the women stayed home. Allie recalled a hot summer day when she and Mattie went to town alone, “Good women didn’t go anyplace. Me and Mattie, Wyatt’s wife, wanted to go down and peek into the nice hotels and restaurants. So, on a terrible hot morning when the men was away, we went and had a good time lookin’. Then we met a friend who gave us a sip of all different kinds of wines, some real fine. We got home and in bed all right, and everything would have been jim-dandy, but Wyatt and Virge came home for dinner for the first time during that hot spell. All I remember is waking up and seeing Virge sittin’ by the bed stiff as a poker and Mattie spillin’ the coffee Wyatt was makin’ her drink. I just said, ‘Mattie. Let ’er go and come on to bed,’ and went back to sleep.”

A neighbor of Allie and the Earp wives said, “The line was pretty well drawn those days. Ordinary women didn’t mix with the wives of gamblers and saloon keepers and bartenders no matter what pretty dresses they had or how nice they were. The Mrs. Earps were all good, but they were in that fix, and we just naturally didn’t have much to do with them.” Being a gambler was a respectable occupation in the Victorian West, but being a wife of a gambler was not.

Tombstone was a town that offered everything and anything that was “bon ton and tony,” which meant trendy, once the silver was booming. It even had an inground swimming pool made of adobe and is still used to this day. One of the first restaurants to open was the Star, owned by none other than Joseph Isaac “Ike” Clanton, an anti-Earp participant in the infamous gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Despite that, he was a literate businessman. His restaurant was located in the area known as the Mill Site, the Arizona Weekly Star reported on December 12, 1878.

“Tombstone Mill Site is now the scene of activity. Houses, shanties, and jacals are going up rapidly, and several families are on the ground. A restaurant has been opened by Mr. Isaac “Ike” Clanton.”

Clanton placed an order with Lionel M. Jacobs in Tucson on December 22, 1878. He sent one hundred and fifty dollars cash with his courier, J.E. Bailey, to buy three hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of groceries and the balance to be put on his account. His letter instructed, “I will pay only in greenbacks and wish you to sell to me at greenback price…. Yours very respectfully, Isaac Clanton.” Some of the items he ordered included dried apples and peaches, lard, coffee, canned tomatoes, raisins, salt, pepper, syrup, flour, dishes, glasses, towels, cream of tartar, sugar, and corn meal.

During its heyday, the town glittered with nice hotels and gaslit restaurants that were beautifully decorated and often compared to the finest in San Francisco. Tombstone’s restaurants advertised, “the most elegantly appointed restaurant in the city” and the “best cooking and polite attentive service.” Many were decorated with shimmering crystal chandeliers, plush Brussels carpeting, and shiny walnut tables that were adorned with imported china, sparkling cut glass, and stylish silver cutlery. Imagine Doc Holliday or Johnny Ringo sitting down to a meal of salmon with Hollandaise sauce, ribs of beef, chicken fricassee, baked oyster pie, gumbo, potatoes, green peas, tomatoes, or blackberry pie.

Even though the patrons of these establishments ate elaborate meals in beautiful settings, weather and nature often interfered with the experience. Hot and cold temperatures, pesky flies, and unbearable dust swirling from the streets added to the dining experience. Tombstone sprinkled the streets with excess water from the mines, but when water was in great demand, none could be spared for the streets, and meals were served with a side of grit.

The meals themselves reflected the trends of the 1880s and did not include today’s popular southwestern fare. This was, after all, the Victorian era, when classic French cuisine and oysters were trendy, and the menus were often printed in French. In late 1881, Tombstone’s Grand Hotel restaurant finally changed the menu to English and the Epitaph newspaper reported, “They have taken a new and very sensible departure by publishing its bill of fare in English, instead of French.”

Not all of Tombstone’s restaurants served French food. Many of the restaurant owners hailed from Europe because Tombstone’s mines attracted a large influx of immigrants. The owners and cooks were from various ethnic backgrounds, and their cooking often reflected their heritage. Tombstone’s restaurants and chophouses also served English, German, Italian, Irish, Creole, and New England cuisine. Even back in the day, a restaurant’s chef made all the difference, and it was common for a restaurant to brag that their new cook was from the Pacific Coast, San Francisco, or New Orleans. The Maison Doree restaurant in the Cosmopolitan Hotel offered, “Chicken for breakfast and dinner, only $1, including wine; without wine the same as usual.” A typical miner’s wages were three dollars per day, so many of them chose to eat at friend’s houses, over an open fire, or in their tents rather than in the glittering dining rooms. But it appears that the people of Tombstone ate well, whether it was in the dining room of a restaurant or behind bars in a jail cell. In addition to preparing meals for the patrons who dined at their establishments, several restauranteurs provided meals for prisoners staying in Tombstone’s jail.

Tombstone’s new arrivals and guests enjoyed pleasant accommodations, too. In 1880 the Grand Hotel was opened by Lavinia Holly. An Epitaph news reporter was given a preopening inspection of the Grand and its restaurant. The headline of his article, “Tombstone’s New Hotel—The Most Elegant Hostelry in Arizona.” He wrote, “the first thing to strike the eye is the wide and handsome staircase, covered by an elegant carpet and supporting a heavy black walnut baluster… a heavy Brussels carpet of the most elegant style and finish graces the floor; the walls are adorned with rare and costly paintings; the furniture is of walnut, cushioned with the most expensive silk; and nothing lacks, save the piano, which will be in place shortly. The Grand’s dining room shimmered with its three elegant chandeliers that hung from their center pieces and walnut tables that were covered with cut glass, china, silver salt and pepper shakers, and the latest style of cutlery. Messrs. Devern and Whitehead oversaw a kitchen that contained an elegant Montagin range with a broiler, sinks with hot and cold water, and ‘all the appliances necessary to feed five hundred persons at a few hours’ notice.’” On September 15, miner and diarist George Parsons dined at the Grand Hotel and wrote, “it is the best place I’ve been thus far in the territory. Something like a hotel. Best meal yet and best served. Popular prices, too—only four bits.”

Tombstone prospered until about 1886 when the pumping machinery in the last remaining mine, the Contention, caught on fire. When the pump failed, the mine began to fill with water. The people of Tombstone could only speculate what would become of them and their town. The Daily Tombstone wrote, “...but the people of Tombstone are brave and courageous, and have successfully outlived several drawbacks, and will do so in this case.”

In August 1886, silver dropped again to ninety-one cents, which caused the Tombstone Milling & Mining Company to shut down their operations. George Cheyney, the company’s manager, said that if the price of silver trended up again, enough for the company to make money, mining would resume.

By December 1886, silver had risen to $1.02, but the larger mines remained idle. The mines did resume operations for a while during the early part of 1887, but by April, the price of silver began to fall again. It was just a matter of time before Tombstone’s population hit its lowest point. The 1900 census revealed only 646 hearty souls remained in town, when in 1883 there were 7,000. The remaining population largely supported county courthouse activities, and Tombstone remained the county seat until 1929.

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Sherry Monahan is an award-winning culinary historian who enjoys researching the genealogy of food and spirits. While there’s still plenty to explore about frontier food, she’s expanding her culinary repertoire to include places and foods from all over America and beyond. She holds memberships in the James Beard Foundation, the Author’s Guild, Single Action Shooting Society, and the Wild West History Association. She is the past president of Western Writers of America (2014-2016), a professional genealogist, and an honorary Dodge City marshal. One of her latest titles, The Tombstone Cookbook: Recipes and Lore from the Town Too Tough To Die, won the 2023 Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Medal for Best Western Cookbook.