"Too Tough to Die"

In Tombstone,* Ariz., one of the toughest western mining camps of the '80s, it was only natural that the daily paper should be named the Epitaph. It was not because, as one old miner once cracked, newspapers, like epitaphs, are full of lies. On the contrary, the Epitaph gave such an accurate picture of the rootin'-tootin'-shootin' West that for years its files have proved a valuable source for historians.

The Epitaph at last gets its public due in Tombstone's Epitaph (University of New Mexico Press; $4.50), by Douglas D. Martin, onetime Pulitzer Prizewinner, ex-managing editor of the Detroit Free Press and now professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.

"Up to the Daisies." The Epitaph was founded in 1880 by Tucson Publisher John P. Clum, who soon devised a handy way of handling Tombstone's bloody gun fights and other occasions of sudden death. He listed them under a stock head: DEATH'S DOINGS. In reporting Tombstone affairs, Editor Clum's stories sometimes read like the dime novels of the day. Sample: "The lurking fiend, who had secreted himself with hell in his heart and death in his mind, drew deadly aim and dropped his victim dead in his tracks." The Epitaph's prize headline:

"BILLY THE KID"/-

TAKES A SHOT AT "BUCKSKIN FRANK"

THE LATTER PROMPTLY REPLIED

AND THE FORMER QUIETLY TURNS HIS TOES

UP TO THE DAISIES.

Tombstone's life was not all blood & thunder. The Epitaph often crooked a little finger and wrote of its Grand Hotel, where, "to crown all, each room [has] windows"; the elegant Tombstone Club, whose "chairs, cuspadores and curtains are of the same general color as the carpet"; the Alhambra, where "an orchestra of three pieces discusses the latest and most fashionable music"; and the Oriental, "the most elegantly furnished saloon this side of the . . . Golden Gate."

Heart Failure. The Epitaph's sport editor also grew lyrical about the local baseball team. Wrote he, on the team's trip to "Phenix": ". . . the nine that journeyed to a strange land, glorying in their strength and mighty in their boastfulness, were beaten and utterly routed . . . and their raiment of purple and fine linen was grievously soiled." The only thing missing in his account: the score.

The Epitaph never worried about libel (it once charged a competing paper with blackmail) or the feelings of its readers. "The remains of the late Kiv Phillips," it reported in 1882, "were . . . not well embalmed and the stench was beginning to get so great it was feared the express company would not ship [the body]." Another local brief: "James Fair Jr. is dead. It was the same old story of heart failure, which is another name for alcoholism."

The Epitaph also had a strong crusading voice. It campaigned for years to get a railroad into Tombstone (after 22 years, it succeeded). It staunchly upheld the statehood movement for Arizona, and took the side of law & order against such outlaws as John Ringo and Billy Claiborne. (For this stand, Editor Clum narrowly missed being shot.)

When Tombstone finally began to crumble (the silver mines filled with water and the miners left), the Epitaph stoutly proclaimed that Tombstone was "too tough to die." So was the Epitaph. It is still printed (now only once a week), near the spot where Founder Clum set up his hand press and type cases 71 years ago. Its circulation of 996 is scattered through nearly all of the states as well as several foreign countries.

It has a profitable job-printing business on the side, and this year won three first prizes in a statewide competition for weeklies. Publisher Clayton Smith (now in the Navy) thinks the Epitaph is a long way from needing a tombstone.

* Named by a miner who struck silver there, after being told that all he would find in the desert country was his own tombstone.

/- Billy Claiborne, no kin to New Mexico's famed Billy the Kid, whose real name was William H. Bonney.

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