Tombstone Allen Street
— a street the 1880s never quite left.
Not only on a wall.
“Allen Street runs through the centre of the old silver town Ed Schieffelin founded in 1879. Boardwalks, brick fronts, the Bird Cage Theatre still standing at the east end. The gunfight near the O.K. Corral happened a block over on Fremont in October 1881. The whole district was named a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and still holds its 19th-century shape.
Tombstone Allen Street, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tombstone sits at about 4,500 feet on the high desert between the Dragoon Mountains to the north and the Huachucas to the southwest. Ed Schieffelin filed the first silver claim here in 1877 and the town was incorporated in 1879. Within four years the population had passed 7,000, making it one of the largest settlements in the Southwest. Allen Street is the central commercial spine, three blocks of brick and adobe storefronts still set behind wooden boardwalks. The whole district was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, recognising it as the most intact silver-rush townscape in the western United States.
The year that fixed Tombstone in the public imagination was 1881. On 26 October the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday faced the Clanton and McLaury party in a vacant lot on Fremont Street, six doors west of the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral. The fight lasted about thirty seconds and left three men dead. Allen Street, one block south, was the centre of the town's daily life then and remains the centre of the visitor district now. The Bird Cage Theatre opened on Allen in December 1881 and operated through the silver decline, eventually sealed and reopened in the 20th century with much of its interior intact.
Allen Street is closed to vehicle traffic for three central blocks, between 3rd and 6th, making the walking length about a quarter mile. Stagecoaches still run the cross-streets, and re-enactors stage the O.K. Corral gunfight several times a day on the original lot. The Bird Cage Theatre, the Tombstone Epitaph offices, and the Schieffelin Hall opera house are all open to the public. Most shops keep daily hours; the town's summer is hot, with afternoon highs commonly above 95°F. The Boothill Graveyard sits a short drive north of town, with the original headboards reproduced on the same plots.