Customer Reviews

Around Tombstone: Ghost Towns and Gunfights (Images of America: Arizona)

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Until just recently, I was unaware of Arcadia Publishing and its "Images of America" series of photo-books. My word, their output is truly impressive: over 5,000 such books on various American towns, cities, neighborhoods and so on! Jane Eppinga's AROUND TOMBSTONE, GHOST TOWNS AND GUNFIGHTS offers up a photographic tribute to the legendary town of Tombstone, Arizona and surrounding communities. It's a fascinating tribute to the long-gone Wild West.

Eppinga's book chronicles and illustrates Tombstone, Charleston, Courtland, Gleeson, St. David, Fairbank, and Pearce along with the legendary Mascot Mine and the O. K. Corral Gunfight. Tombstone is clearly the top dog, taking up 90 of the book's 128 pages. The others were once thriving mining towns that went under.

The 180 period and contemporary images found in the book were obtained from various Arizona museums, historical archives and private collections. They depict myriad scenes of frontier life, street scenes, businesses, town life, personalities including Wyatt Earp, landscapes, mining operations, contemporary shots of abandoned buildings and so on. All are well-captioned. What comes out from the photographs is the rich variety of frontier life and the many different nationalities that helped populate the West.

Fans of the old West will enjoy AROUND TOMBSTONE. It's an excellent and fairly inexpensive photographic study of those bygone pioneers and towns. Recommended.