I definitely smashed through this point at some point after midnight last night. This project was the biggest time sink so far, on par with the final project for last semester. But John Henry put the bar high, and Don Fields made it look easy, so I found it hard to find a point where I was happy. Come to find out that your choice of architectural subject and the available background sources (pictures and drawings) makes all of the difference in the world!
My topic was the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, arguably the most famous gunfight in American history. I thought that utilizing a Sanborn fire insurance map of Tombstone, Arizona from about the time of the fight would reveal some details about the way the event played out. Thinking that a reconstruction of the buildings in and around the O.K. Corral would be useful, I set out to build as much of the city I could in the time frame of the project. I discovered that, as with most of Dr. Petrik’s projects, the devil is in the details.
Background
Around 3pm on 26 October 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona, the bad relations between the Earp brothers (backed up by the inimitable Doc Holiday) and the local crew of roughnecks collectively known as the “Cowboys” came to a head in a vacant lot near the corner of Fremont and Third Streets. In a short 30 seconds of shooting, over thirty shots were fired. As the smoke cleared, three of the five Cowboys lay dead or dying and two Earps and Holiday were wounded. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday were charged with murder since they were not lawmen (Virgil was the city marshal and Morgan was one of his deputies) but in a controversial hearing, the presiding judge and the grand jury determined that there was not enough evidence to bring the men to trial.
Sounds simple, right? But as the Wikipedia article notes: “The conflicts leading to the gunfight are complex: the two sides were related in two instances (in both cases related by strong family ties), but were in opposition due to politics, business concerns, and other ideological factors.” Wikipedia actually gives the incident a thorough treatment. And the controversy remains even to this day, as evidenced by this website, maintained by a distant relative of Ike Clanton (perhaps the central antagonist of Cowboys involved in the fight). Even HistoryNet has gotten in on the action, publishing three articles about the event. Perhaps I could add some more detail to the conversation about the shootout with a model of the immediate area of the vacant lot. (By the way, the fight did not become known as the “Shootout at the O.K. Corral” until several years after – a newspaper man decided that “Shootout in a vacant lot near the corner of Fremont and Third Streets” just didn’t have a good ring to it....)
Process
Once I had decided to investigate Tombstone, Arizona circa 1881, it was an easy trip to the Library of Congress Map Division Reading Room. There I was quickly able to locate the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps of the town. Unfortunately, the oldest map extant is dated 1883. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that a fire in June 1881 destroyed the eastern side of Tombstone and another fire in May 1882 destroyed the western half of the city, including the O.K. Corral. And while it is obvious from comparing the Sanborn map with primary sources that some of the buildings were rebuilt on their pre-fire foundations (including the famous corral), some of the structures mentioned in the accounts of the fight do not appear on the Sanborn map.
Figuring it was too late to change track and as of yet undaunted, I forged ahead. Importing the digitized Sanborn map into SketchUp was easy. Then it was just a matter of building on the plots indicated by the Sanborn map. Learning the symbols on the map helped to determine the materials to paint onto the structures. For instance, an “x” indicates a wooden shingle roof, while a black circle (“●”) shows a composite roof and a open circle (“○”) specifies a slate roof. In addition, yellow structures are timber framed, brown designates adobe walls and red means brick. And while the Sanborn map showed the City Hall as the only brick building on the block, the brick City Hall building was not built until 1882.
Given the time constraints (this is a small project and only 15% of my final grade!), I decided that I would carry on with the Sanborn map reconstruction. If I were digging deep, I would probably start pouring over the newspaper accounts and other primary source material to determine what buildings were where. There are several pictures of Tombstone in the 1880s that helped me determine the shape of the buildings and the (wide variety of!) materials used to construct them.
Then it was just a matter of plowing through the 33 buildings on the block. Again due to time constraints, I focused most of my detail work on Fremont St., the northern side of the block where the gunfight occurred. As a nice bit of detail, the sun is set for 3:00pm on 26 October, giving some idea of the role the afternoon sun would have played in the drama.
Benefits
The cool factor is high on these, but I am not convinced that I learned anything new about the actual event from the model itself. In addition, the primary map source I found turned out to be misleading thanks to the May 1882 fire. Given the time and inclination, I am sure that I could do a true reconstruction of the town based on written descriptions and old photographs.
What I did gain is a deeper understanding of the town itself due to the time spent researching the buildings and the building materials. This increased my exposure to and the depth of my knowledge of the American West exponentially. I am not sure I would have spent as much time digging into the details without the need to reconstruct the town. I am also still encouraged by this line of visual thinking. I believe that there are historical questions that can be addressed in original ways with this kind of investigative tool.
