Historic Resources Inventory and Report of Tombstone, Arizona

Johns & Strittmatter Inc.

Historic Resources Inventory and Report of Tombstone, Arizona

Author(s): Johns & Strittmatter Inc.

Year: 1996

Summary

Four sets of mountains can be seen from Tombstone; the Dragoon Mountains to the northeast, the Mule Mountains to the southeast, the Huachucas to the southwest and Whetstones to the northwest. From these mountains, rivulets form an alluvial plain and feed into the San Pedro River. The San Pedro originates in Sonora, Mexico from a point, Casa de San Pedro, in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The river then flows north to feed the Gila which in tum joins the Colorado at Yuma Crossing; the Colorado then flows south to become part of the Gulf of California. The San Pedro, unlike most Arizona rivers, contains year-round, visible moisture and has a declivity of six-hundred feet its first forty miles north of the Mexican border. At this point the San Pedro Valley is from fifteen to twenty miles wide, wedged between the four sets of mountains. Tombstone lies at an elevation of 4,539 feet above sea level; a steep rise from Fairbank at 3,853 feet just eight miles away along the river. The silver-bearing Tombstone Hills are caused by a local upheaval of porphyry capped by limestone. This mineral belt extends about eight miles east and west, and twenty-five miles to the south to the region of the Bisbee copper deposits.

The Tombstone, Arizona, Historic Residential Inventory Area lies mostly within the original 320-acre, rectangular townsite as platted by the Tombstone Townsite Company, founded in 1879. It also includes properties in the Bowman and Survey Additions of 1881. The original Tombstone Townsite is bounded by First Street to the west, North Street to the north, the top portion of the blocks on the south side of Toughnut Street and a point to the east which would have been equivalent to Fifteenth Street. (It will be noted that in 1958, the non-grid plan Coronado Heights Subdivision represents a re-platting of the northeast corner). Within the original townsite, the inventory area includes properties on Blocks K and L, Blocks 1, 2, 6, 7, 15, 23, 29 through 37, 43 through 50 and Block 57. Outside of the original townsite, basically to the west in the Bowman Addition, are properties included on Blocks I (Roman Numeral), A, M, V, 10 I and I 06. There are also two properties located on Block III of the Survey Addition. Within the township plat, the intervening blocks focusing on Toughnut, Allen and Fremont Streets, between Third and Sixth Streets pertain to an historic, commercial inventory area.