The secret history of Tombstone, Arizona

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Arizona was a wild place in the 1880s with gun fights at the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp and his crew roaming across Arizona desert on their vengeance ride, avenging the death of Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate bellied up to the bar having a great time. But none of that could have happened if they didn't solve Tombstone's biggest problem first, which is what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to tell you a little history that most people don't know. The biggest problem that Tombstone really had wasn't cowboys with guns, it was Tombstone doesn't have any water.

[00:00:31]Tombstone is located about 12 miles that way, up on a desert plateau that's completely dry. Well, to mine and then extract and then process ore, you have to have access to water. So, they solved that problem here along the San Pedro River. What they actually did was establish two different towns. One over here called Charleston and one across the river over there called Millville.

[00:00:53]Now, everybody tended to live over there and there was big ore processing facilities over here. And nothing about Tombstone could have ever happened if they hadn't have built those two towns first.