Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Tombstone, AZ

Tombstone is an incorporated city in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, famous as one of the best-known silver boomtowns of the American frontier.

The city was founded in 1879 by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who named it after his first mining claim, filed on September 3, 1877, after a fellow scout warned him the only rock he would find in the Apache country would be his own tombstone.

The townsite was surveyed in March 1879 on Goose Flats, a mesa above Schieffelin's Goodenough Mine, and lots on Allen Street sold for $5 each.

Tombstone's mining district produced some $40 to $85 million in silver bullion, making it the most productive silver district in Arizona, and the population grew from about 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years.

Tombstone was incorporated as a city on February 21, 1881, and that same month became the seat of the newly created Cochise County, a role it kept until the county seat later moved to Bisbee.

On October 26, 1881, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday fought the Clanton and McLaury brothers in a vacant lot on Fremont Street near the O.K. Corral, in the most famous gunfight of the Old West.

Boom-era landmarks include the Bird Cage Theatre, Schieffelin Hall, and the Tombstone Epitaph, described as the longest-running newspaper in the West.

The silver mines flooded after they penetrated the water table, and an 1886 fire destroyed the pumping station; with rebuilding deemed unprofitable, the population fell from 1,875 in 1890 to a low of 646 in 1910.

Nicknamed "The Town Too Tough to Die," Tombstone reinvented itself as a historic tourist destination, and its historic district was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1962.

According to the 2020 census, Tombstone had a permanent population of 1,308 residents living in 677 households.