Category: All Stories

In Tombstone, gunfights usually evoke scenes of corrals, men falling from rooftops and a lonesome dusty road with gunslingers standing under the beating sun.

But that’s not what Jim Ferguson and Terry Najarian had in mind when they created the new Wyatt Earp Theatre, the only indoor gunfight show in Tombstone. 

Wooden benches line the rear of the theater, which opened over Labor Day weekend.

A poker table and old bar create a historically accurate scene, and they’re only a few feet away from where the audience sits.

 

With his gelled brown hair, ironic T-shirt and architectural glasses, climate scientist Nick McKay looks more Silicon Valley than microscope drone.

In summer 2010, the 28-year-old University of Arizona Ph.D. student got a call from his adviser, Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, a world-famous climate scientist at the UA who shared the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Overpeck was studying climate model simulations of the last interglacial period—also called the LIG—the warm period that preceded the most recent ice age.

“Nick, I’ve got this idea,” Overpeck said. “I think if you work really hard at it, you could be done in a week.” 

 

Ever since her first trip to Arizona in 1992, Angelika Haeber knew she wanted to move to the Grand Canyon State.

“I was just blown away with (Arizona),” said Haeber, 65, a retired German teacher who is originally from Germany and now lives in Green Valley. To remember her experience, Haeber  ultimately made a quilt that reflects her images of Arizona.

And now that quilt, “Arizona Dreaming,” and quilts made by people around the state, will be featured in an exhibit called “100 Years, 100 Quilts” to celebrate Arizona’s centennial next year.

Organizers believe the “100 Years, 100 Quilts” exhibit will be the largest centennial commemoration using quilts in the country. The Arizona Centennial Quilt Project and the Arizona Historical Society are working together to organize the exhibit, which is funded through grants and donations.

The idea for the exhibit came out of a conversation about Arizona’s centennial among members of the Arizona Quilt Study Group, a group that explores the history of quilting.

[caption id="attachment_58" align="alignleft" width="551"]Johnny Fields sells his Tombstone Tolerable Water from his stand on Third Street. Although branded as aged water from local wells, the water is shipped from Phoenix. (Photo by Andrew Schaeffer/ASNS)[/caption]

Arsenic levels in Tombstone’s tap water have increased because the town’s supply of mountain water has been reduced and well usage increased, but residents continue to drink from the faucet.

“I’ve lived here for 17 years, and I’ve always drank right from the tap,” said Kari Lord, manager of Tombstone General Store. “Everyone I know still drinks from the tap, too.”

The store is one of the few local sellers of bottled water, but Lord said she has not seen an increase in the demand for their imported water.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” she said. “And I think the rest of the town feels the same way.”

Susan Addison, an owner of Ike’s Mini Market, agreed. Her gas station/mini-mart also has free tap water for patrons, and she said people still come in to get that over bottled water.

“I still drink it,” she said. “The water’s been passed by the state. I think it’s still safe. It’s just higher levels of arsenic.” 

 

 

Kevin Rudd stepped out of his truck in Carr Canyon, his $200 hiking boots crunching on the loose rock underfoot. He reached into the backseat for a short dagger because he’d forgotten his gun.

Slinging a bag over his shoulder, he began the mountain trek he makes every weekday.

Rudd, who came to town as a neophyte by way of Tucson, Scottsdale and the Florida Keys, found a Tombstone in trouble when he began his job as the city’s public works project manager.

The town too tough too die had only two aqueducts bringing mountain water to its 1,000-plus people, and they’d both run dry. 

This summer’s Monument Fire ripped through Carr and Miller canyons in the Huachuca Mountains, and subsequent landslides wreaked havoc on the town’s water lifelines. A chance meeting with Mayor Jack Henderson and then $50,000 in emergency funding from Gov. Jan Brewer led Rudd to Tombstone, where he has been charged with keeping the town from drying up.