History
Following the 1877 discovery of silver ore by prospector Ed Schieffelin in southeastern Arizona, the town of Tombstone was founded and grew rapidly as miners flooded the area in the hope of finding their fortunes. At the time, the area was part of Pima County with the county seat Tucson being a rugged two-day, 70-mile journey away. In 1881, the residents of the thriving boomtown voted to separate from Pima County and the territorial legislature subsequently formed a new county, Cochise County. A new courthouse was built the following year and housed all of the county’s offices.
Tombstone remained the county seat until 1929, when outvoted by a growing Bisbee, and the county seat was moved there. The last county office left the courthouse in 1931. Except for an ill-fated attempt to convert the courthouse into a hotel during the 1940s, the building stood vacant until 1955. When the Tombstone Restoration Commission acquired it, they began the courthouse rehabilitation and the development as a historical museum that has continued to operate as a state park since 1959. It features exhibits and thousands of artifacts which tell of Tombstone's colorful past.
The courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Read more about this topic: Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park
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—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)