Tombstone Old West Founders Days Event

April 1st, 2nd & 3rd 2011

April 1879 - April 2011

Happy 132st Birthday Tombstone!

Come visit Tombstone and travel down the wooden boardwalks that Ed Schieffelin walked as we pay homage to our Founding Father! Check out Event Schedule and come prepared to have fun!!!

We will be celebrating with the return of the Gun Show, Continuous Street Entertainment featuring award winning Joey Dillon, Craft Faire Show, Movies on the Street,  Mining Displays, Hard-Rock Drilling Contest, Saturday Night Variety Show, The Folklorico Dancers, Tohono O' Odham Dancers, "Taste of Tombstone", All Pet Parade, Old-Fashioned Lunch Basket Auction,  the crowning of our Rose Queen, our ever popular Rose Parade and for the first time, Illusionists Sarlot & Eyed and Sierra Vista Community Brass Band!

In 1877, with a prospector’s outfit and .30 cents to his name, Edward Schieffelin headed for the Apache country, east of Fort Huachuca, to look for silver. When soldiers at the Fort heard of his folly, they laughed and told him all he would find in those hills would be his own Tombstone….meaning that the Indians would surely get him. In late August of 1877, Schieffelin made the first of many silver mine discoveries, and named his first mine "The Tombstone". By 1879 the boomtown of Tombstone arose. By 1883, the mining district was one of the largest population centers between St. Louis and San Francisco.

In 1886 a homesick bride from Scotland planted a "Lady Banksia" rose in Tombstone. It has been growing here ever since and is recognized as the "Worlds Largest Rose Tree" according to Guinness World Records. The Rose Tree Inn Museum on 4th Street houses the Rose Tree. Over a million tiny white blooms cover its 9,000 square foot trellis. We will be honoring its 124th blooming in 2009.