By Frederick Schoemehl
Editor, National Edition
Note: Several published accounts were used in the compilation of this narrative history. These include a retrospective by Wallace E. Clayton that appeared in The Tombstone Epitaph in May 1980; a special historical edition on John P. Clum, published by the Epitaph in 2006; a special historical edition on the O. K. Corral gunfight reissued by the Epitaph in 2007; several “Hall of Fame” biographies prepared for the Arizona Newspaper Association; Arizona’s Territorial Newspapers, by Sam S. Webb; and Newspapering in the Old West, by Robert F. Karolevitz. Other material was drawn from the Epitaph files.
For their obvious interest in developing the western frontier, those who came early were also interested
in transferring Eastern institutions to the West. Settling, the process of physically adapting to new
places, was accompanied by settling down, the companion process of establishing law and order by
bringing existing institutions to the new towns on the frontier. Part of the structuring process was to
ensure that new settlements would mirror the old through the prompt creation of political forms,
schools, churches, transportation lines, post offices and newspapers.
Newspapers on the western frontier did several things. By the second half of the 19th century,
newspapers were ubiquitous in America’s print culture. The development of telegraphic
communication now permitted information to move extraordinarily quickly from point to point. But there
still needed to be a means of handing off the “news” to the consumer. Newspapers became the
transfer medium in a new information age, the delivery agent to what today we call the end user. In
1886, for example, the Epitaph used its “Telegraphic” and “Special Telegrams” column give its readers
reaction in Washington, DC to Geronimo’s final surrender to Gen. Nelson Miles. At that same time,
newspapers were an essential element in political persuasion and marketing endeavors.
Newspapers, through editorial positions, communicated with different constituencies on local, regional
and national issues. By discussing, dissecting and defending different ideas, they were important
engines in shaping public opinion. By carrying advertising, their readerships learned about who did
and sold what. Such information was important in boom towns, like Tombstone, where new arrivals
needed to know about stage schedules, fine cigars and life’s other necessities. Finally, newspapers
were heralds, often unabashedly so. Striking an oratorical pose, they often were the chief champions of
what their locales were “destined” to become.
In this mix of technological change, political contention and prophesy, many newspapers were not
beacons of objectivity. News was served up with equal helpings of politics and passion. When The
Tombstone Epitaph was founded in 1880, John Philip Clum did not discuss the need to report the
goings on in Tombstone without fear or favor or about being “fair and balanced,” to borrow a phrase.
What Clum did inflect were the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Echoing John Winthrop’s
words upon the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Clum called the bustling silver camp “a city
upon the hill.” The comment surely belied Clum’s belief that religion was necessary in the process of
settling down. Clum said the Epitaph would be “a representative mining journal,” a vehicle for
enhancing Tombstone’s founding industry.
Clum had little need to mask his bias in the biggest story of his newspaper career – coverage of the
October 1881 shootout at the O. K. Corral. The gunfight broke the town’s “quietness and good order,”
Clum wrote in his lead, a solitude that law enforcement had brought over the previously “fractious” and
“dreaded cowboys.” With three cowboys dead and Wyatt Earp walking tall, Clum wasted no time in
using the sub-head “EARP BROTHERS JUSTIFIED” to state his immediate conclusion. With
references to “the best class of citizens” and “all good citizens” and “the better portion of our citizens,”
Clum’s view of the matter was settled. That he repeatedly used the word “citizen” conveyed special
meaning. To Clum, cowboys were not citizens as he defined the word; citizens had settled down and
respected law and order. The cowboys’ decision to come into town while armed was prima facie evidence they were not behaving as citizens in a well-ordered city on a hill. If there was an alternate
explanation of the day’s events – a counter-narrative – it was not going to be part of the Epitaph’s
immediate coverage.
Why? As a representative mining journal, the paper’s job was to align itself with the forces that were
intent on consolidating mining capital in a land that was groping for an economic raison d’etre. In the
leapfrog nature of western development, California’s Sierra foothills represented capital’s first big mark
on the West. That was followed by the less indelible impression made by Nevada’s Comstock. Did Ed
Schieffelin’s discovery mean that Arizona was next in line? Moreover, parked in the mind of every
person associated with western mining was the idea that livestock and pastoral activities were
becoming quaint. Clum was a Republican. And Republicans of the early 1880s believed in several
types of hardness – an industrial plant and transportation system fashioned of iron and steel, a money
supply backed by precious metal, and what was seen as the inherent rigidity and regulation of a market
economy. This was at some remove from the older, Jeffersonian view of a nation of free-holding
agriculturalists – ruralists who tended crops and animals, bartered face to face in local market towns
and that were more communitarian than commercial. To Clum and the western modernizers, that was
just so old school.
By the time he reached Tombstone in 1880, Clum knew much about new school. Born in New York in
1851, Clum came to Santa Fe, N. M., in 1871 and initially worked in the new information industry by
sending weather observations to Washington, DC by telegraph. As a new face in the countryside, Clum
was schooled in one of the biggest problems in the West, the continuing unrest between native people
and the newcomers. Drawing on his extant government service and his Dutch Reformed Church faith,
Clum decided he might succeed whether others had failed: to find a way to achieve peace between
eastern entrants and Apaches in the Southwest. The U. S. Army method – direct orders backed up with
physical force – had not brought peace to the San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona or lands
beyond. While Clum was sympathetic to Apache concerns, his was a paternal sympathy. Clum did not
believe in Indian rights to self-determination as the term is understood today. He envisioned Indians
settling down. The way to accomplish that was to concentrate them into a colony, the San Carlos
reservation, where they would have limited self-government under the watchful eye of the colonial
authority, the Office of Indian Affairs. If enlightened in theory, the comforting idea of a settled reservation
was thwarted by off-reservation Apaches, including Geronimo, who were not ready to give up traditional
lifeways just because it fit the agenda of the government’s peace through piety program.
Though Clum had been the only government attaché – civilian or military – to capture Geronimo, and
had recommended unsuccessfully that Geronimo be executed for numerous killings, Clum was on his
way out of the Indian business. This occurred in 1875, when the Army decided it would take a tougher
line at San Carlos. Would the Army or Clum’s appointed Indian police force manage the reservation?
Stung by the vitriol slung over his ideas of using Apaches to police Apaches, Clum began his move
toward the exit, and finally left in 1877. After San Carlos, Clum moved in two directions. He studied law
and quickly was admitted to the Pinal County, Ariz., bar. He also banded with other businessmen and
purchased a newspaper, the Tucson Citizen. He renamed it the Arizona Citizenand moved it to
Florence in Pinal County. At this time, the Citizen was seven years old. It was not Arizona’s first paper –
that designation goes to The Weekly Arizonian which was launched in Tubac, then in New Mexico
Territory, in March 1859, under the editorship of Edward E. Cross. In any event, the Citizen holds the
title as Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper; the Epitaph, at 127 years, is Arizona’s
second oldest continuously published newspaper.
Clum’s first venture into newspaper publishing was not particularly notable, save his use of the Citizen to justify his paternal approach in dealing with the Apaches – as opposed to the Army’s tougher
strategy. Florence did not prove to be the newspaper town that Clum envisioned, and within two years,
he moved the publication back to Tucson, took back its old name and switched to daily circulation. With
about 5,000 residents, Tucson could support its citizen-run Citizen. By 1879, two years after
Schieffelin's silver discovery southeast of Tucson, Clum’s attention was drawn to the dazzle that was
Tombstone. Clum sold his interest in the Citizen in January 1880, moved to Tombstone, and launched
the iconic Epitaph with an afternoon issue on Saturday, May 1, 1880.
Not that it was all that easy. Clum had to purchase printing equipment, land, and support his wife and
son. Two partners, both printers, joined him in the new enterprise. Clum maintained, in a wonderful
turn of a phrase, that “no Tombstone is complete without its epitaph.” While true epitaphs are just so
much gloss about a decedent’s life; Clum’s first Epitaph read as prophecy. Like many in the periphery,
Clum envisioned Tombstone as a wealth-producing engine of change. Its underground riches would
attract investment capital that would set the stage for continued growth and development. The city
would mature, in Clum’s words, to that “city on a hill,” a beacon as bright as “ancient Rome,” inhabited
by a civilized citizenry.
The problem with most beacons is that there are occasional dips in the supply voltage, if not outright
outages. Tombstone’s early years were marked by mudslinging, gunslinging, murky land dealings,
and the ill-effects of water and fire in the wrong places at the wrong times. In two years, Clum went from
Tombstone mayor to a position in the U. S. Post Office’s inspection department in Washington, DC.
What had gone wrong? Boomtowns moved at a boomtown’s pace – those who get in on the ground
floor are anxious to preserve their position at all costs – and Clum was among those willing to apply
the brakes. When Clum arrived in Tombstone, the town was run by appointed officials, including a
justice of the peace, Mike Gray, who was a real estate agent. Under federal land laws, townsite lots
were sold by the town, with proceeds used to underwrite the cost of public services. Clum’s contented
that the mayor, Alder Randall, had simply doled out lots to business associates, including Gray. In
rapidly developing conditions, squatters had taken to some lots, while others had been sold or resold
by people who had purchased the lots from others who claimed lawful title. Gray’s company, of course,
believed it was the only lawful broker. In the boomtown period, Clum asserted, “Tombstone has been
handed over to the speculators. Our citizens are being ousted from their homes.”
Now doubling as postmaster and an editor-publisher, Clum ventured farther into the political arena.
Having won a court order that ended the town lot sale, Clum decided to run for elective office. As a
mayoral candidate under the newly former Citizens Protective Party, Clum sought a settled town in
which he would “defeat corruption,” while bringing “peace and prosperity to our city.” He was elected
Jan. 4, 1881.
Now a postmaster, an editor-publisher and a mayor, Clum faced the challenge of what he labeled “the
county ring.” When Cochise County was made a free-standing political jurisdiction, several Democrats
won coveted appointed offices doled out by the territory’s Republican governor, John C. Frémont. In
essence, Clum broke ranks with the territory’s best-known Republican figure, brotherly fallout not new
then or now. In addition, Clum drew a close association between the “ring” and local ranchers who
were allied with outlaw elements. Thus, Tombstone cleaved between two factions. In one, Clum, the Epitaph, local Republicans, mining capital, and the Earp brothers; in the other, the rivalNuggeti>, local
Democrats, the ranch trade, and several of the so-called cowboys with names like Clanton and
McLaury.
If the former group won the battle for control of Tombstone on a cold Wednesday afternoon in October
1881, Clum’s vision of a settled and prosperous Tombstone remained confounded. Eight months
before the infamous gunfight at the O. K. Corral, the Epitaph reported “water has been struck in one of
the leading mines of the district.” This was not seen as a cause for concern, but optimism with the
experts certain that good water meant good silver could not be far behind. Five years later, Tombstone's
silver production was silenced by water mixed with the inability of major mines in the district to address
the problem, a major equipment fire and languishing silver prices. And four months before the
shootout, Tombstone’s town core – “largely made up of combustible material” – was destroyed by fire.
Fire safety ordinances, which Clum had supported editorially, hadn’t been adopted. It took a second
fire, 11 months later, to bring improvements.
By mid-1882 Clum had enough. Whatever role the Epitaph had played in helping Tombstone to settle
and settle down, it was not enough to hold Clum’s interest. He had lost a wife, a daughter, and, in an
undignified move by superiors, his job as postmaster. With his term as mayor also over, Clum was left
with the Epitaph, which he sold – to, ironically, interests in the “ring” he had fought since arriving in
Tombstone in 1880.
One needs a scorecard to log the names and faces that were attached to Tombstone’s newspapers after Clum’s departure. His immediate successor was Sam Purdy, a Yuma newspaperman and Democrat. Purdy apparently did not stay long in Tombstone, consigning day-to-day duties to Charles Reppy, a Clum associate, through 1883. The next editor was Harry Woods, a former Cochise County undersheriff, and a former editor of the Tombstone Nugget, which had been Clum’s chief rival. Once fire destroyed the Nugget’s plant, it ceased publication. Reppy, with partner W. D. Crowe, distanced themselves from the Epitaph, taking over the Tombstone Republican. The following year, in 1884, a merger ensued, producing the Daily Epitaph and Republican, with Reppy as editor. In 1885, another consolidation occurred, when the Cochise Record, under editor David F. Cooper, and the Daily Epitaph were combined into the Daily Record-Epitaph. During this period, Clum, who had returned to Tombstone as postmaster, worked for the Record-Epitaph. At the time, it was one of two Republican papers in Tombstone. The other, the Daily Tombstone, was decidedly anti-Clum. Editor J. J. Nash called derided Clum as an “imbecile,” an “egotistical ass” and a “sop” who’d been tossed from the party. Editorial jockeying continued in 1886, when Harry Brooks became editor of the Record-Epitaph, only to be followed nine months later by J. O. Dunbar, a political chameleon who had been one of the founders of the now-defunct Nugget. The Daily Tombstone kept at the heels of the Record-Epitaph until the end of 1886, when it closed down. Reppy reemerged to take the helm of the Epitaph, now free of its association with the old Record, and to pick up what was left of the old Daily Tombstone. By this time, the Epitaph had switched to weekly publication, a reflection of the depth of Tombstone’s troubles underground. Nash, not done yet, launched The Tombstone Prospector, as a daily with the struggling Epitaph square in its sights. Reppy left the paper in 1888. New partners brought it out – as a daily, Democratic paper. In a little over a year, however, George Meek and Joseph Madero, who had leased the paper, haplessly concluded “the town will not support a morning daily.” If silver boomed, the paper might go daily again. It did, briefly, in 1890.
In 1888, Samuel C. Bagg became sole owner of a year-old Tombstone paper, the Prospector. This gave the town two papers, both of which wanted to receive what Bagg later called “the velvet of the business at the time” – the printing contract for Cochise County government. Both papers bid on the contract. And it was awarded to the Epitaph even though Bagg’s bid was much lower. Denied the velvet, Bagg sued the county, only to lose the case before District Judge W. H. Barnes. Unwilling to let the matter rest, Bagg’s Prospector attacked the decision – a moved that landed Bagg back before Judge Barnes on a contempt charge. Bagg was given a choice – a $300 fine or 300 days in jail. Confident that the public would rally behind him, Bagg chose jail. Attorneys sidestepped the case, figuring any association with Bagg would be the death knell if they had to appear in Barnes’ court on a future matter. And John Slaughter, the county sheriff, was specifically ordered to treat Bagg like in any other inmate, which meant Bagg couldn’t sleep in the sheriff’s office. The matter was finally settled when business owners paid the fine.
In 1891, Bagg solved the rivalry problem by purchasing the Epitaph. He returned to weekly status as a Sunday week-in-review publication. Having been the butt of Epitaph commentary, none of it too complimentary, bagging the Epitaph must have been sweet for the five-foot tall furniture store owner and son of the founder of the Detroit Tribune.
Having taken control of Tombstone’s incredibly shrinking media empire, Bagg turned his attention to other matters, including positions on various prison, immigration and press commissioners and associations. Like editors before and after him, Bagg extolled the wealth trapped below the surface at Tombstone. But by 1895, Bagg was forced to concede that Tombstone’s future simply was not as bright as the glint off a polished silver bar. Bagg sold his papers, his mining interests in Tombstone and moved to California.
Bagg’s successor was William Hattich, who, at 9, arrived in Tombstone in 1881. He had known the likes of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, had hawked papers on street corners and darkened his hands as a printer’s devil in the town’s back shops. Having lived through the glory days, Hattich was an unabashed booster. When he took over the daily Prospector and weekly Epitaph, Hattich wrote, “Like the courage, perseverance and hope characteristic of the sturdy Arizona prospector in his diligent search for the precious metal, the new Prospector starts out with sharpened tools, new energy and honest and conscientious convictions to prospect on the highways of success.” Standing above the factionalism of a previous decade, Hattich said “Merchants, cattlemen, ranchers, miners and laborers…will find the Prospector a defender, well-wisher and ready and willing champion of their interests.” As booster, Hattich was on fire when E. B. Gage, former superintendent of the Grand Central Mine, returned to the city to disclose the founding of Tombstone Consolidated Mines Company, an outfit that would drain the Grand Central and Contention mines and pump up the local economy. In 1901, the Epitaph said “prosperity has superseded depression.” Two years later, it was equally ecstatic when the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad arrived. Slow as actual progress was underground, Hattich headlined stories such as “Glowing Prospect of Tombstone District,” “Encouraging Showing Below the Water Level,” “Rich Ore Body Encountered,” and “Future Looks Bright.” Even when the mining company was in trouble, Hattich used the fact that machinery was not being brought to the surface as evidence that “no abandonment is contemplated.” That was in 1911. Two years later, on the Prospector’s 25th anniversary, Hattich announced his retirement.
The Giragi family picked up where Hattich left off. Having been in Congress, Metcalf and Pearce before settling in Tombstone, the Giragis had a fair taste for life throughout Arizona. Two sons of Frank and Sarah Giragi, Columbus and Carmel, became friends with Hattich. Columbus took the route of printer’s devil, while Carmel handled advertising errands. When Hattich retired, the young Giragis used their meager savings to acquire the Prospector and Epitaph. Wallace Clayton, a former Epitaph publisher, wrote in 1980 that Hattich essentially gave the papers away as a mark of his friendship with the Giragis – and his pessimism about Tombstone’s future. That future certainly was on the Giragis’s minds when they wrote, “We firmly believe that a reorganization of the mines will bring about prosperity as never witnessed before and confidently believe same is at hand.” People believe as they chose; in reality, the Giragis could not escape the continuing declines of Tombstone’s fortunes; in 1924, they stopped the daily Prospector. Tombstone now was down to one weekly, the Epitaph. Appearing on Fridays, the “county-wide weekly,” as the Giragis called it, would carry with it “more prestige, more confidence and more real advertising value than any other newspaper medium.” They held it until 1926, when it was sold to William Kelly. The Giragi’s newspapering did not end in Tombstone. They saw better prospects elsewhere, taking over papers in Winslow and Holbrook and, later, Flagstaff. Columbus Giragi was known for a pithy column, “Sparks from the Grindstone,” and personal qualities that seemed to fall somewhere between irascible and lovable. A former employee said he was “witty, cynical, caustic, profane, sarcastic, but generally good humored, and always at the finish line, wise and fair.”
William Kelly took over the foundering paper while a student at the University of Arizona and editor of the campus paper, The Wildcat. Kelly was the first to sense that Tombstone’s future might be found in a different corner of its past – in the town’s history and setting instead of its flooded and dormant mines. Several events seemed to coincide. Writer Walter Noble Burns was researching a book, Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest. With its attention to the Shootout at the O. K. Corral and other slices of southeast Arizona history – such as John Slaughter’s rearing of an Apache orphan, Apache May – Tombstone caught the eye of the national media. Consistent with a dramatic change in American culture in the 1920s – automobile tourism – Kelly sensed the ingredients were right for Tombstone to showcase itself in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the town’s founding. Helldorado, drawn from the title of a book by Billy Breakenridge, was the name given the annual event. The Epitaph and the city underwrote the cost of the event, which was both popular and profitable. It even drew Epitaph founder Clum, who quipped that he was “armed only with a fountain pen – sometimes the mightiest of weapons.” For its success in drawing attention to Tombstone’s place in the history of the Old West, Helldorado was not enough to keep Tombstone from losing its position as the government seat of Cochise County. Copper, not silver, was the metal in demand as the result of vastly expanded electrical production, transmission and use in the 1920s. With its copper mines supporting Bisbee, the economic, demographic and political centers of gravity had shifted south of Tombstone. In November 1929, Cochise County voters ended a long-running debate and decided that the county seat should be moved to Bisbee. Perhaps sensing that Tombstone could not be rebuilt any time soon, Kelly sold the Epitaph to Walter Cole, a Seattle newspaperman. Having purchased the paper for $5,000 from his father and having borrowed $4,000 for a new press, Kelly agreed to let Cole to acquire the paper by assuming the balance on the note. That done, Kelly returned to Tucson, received his Ph. D., and went on to become the first director of the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Ethnic Research, specializing in research on Indians of the Southwest.
Walter and Edith Cole’s tenure began in 1930. In their initial vision for Tombstone’s future, they blissfully
called for a “bigger and better Tombstone.” But what indelibly stamped Cole’s name on the Epitaph’s
composing stone were comments two weeks later, when he wrote, “The spirit of Tombstone is to never
say die.” Forgoing the imagery of the little town that could, Cole said Tombstone was “the town too tough to
die.” To be sure, just a few words, but in measure and content they seemed to capture Tombstone’s place
in the history of the Old West – standing tall in the face of adversity. In words, it mirrored the silhouette of
Wyatt Earp, standing unscathed, as the gun smoke cleared after the Shootout at the O. K. Corral.
Overshadowed by other names in the pantheon of Epitaph editors, Cole nonetheless cemented the
slogan to Tombstone’s name.
Drawing on another image, Cole promoted the idea of “Tombstone the Beautiful,” a bit of local pride that
Clum, in a letter, applauded. To the Epitaph founder, Tombstone’s future lay in “the broader and wiser and
more substantial plan of exploiting the attractions and advantages with which nature has so generously
endowed your section.” Still, silver’s siren call struck Cole, who joined previous editors who had
proclaimed that Tombstone was on the verge of reclaiming its productive prowess. But it never came to
pass. Having guided the Epitaph during the peak years of the Great Depression, what he called “the most
trying times in the history of this camp,” Cole sold the Epitaph in 1938.
If anyone might reasonably claim the title “Mr. Tombstone,” the honor might well go to Clayton Smith, who was the Epitaph’s longest-running editor, from 1938 until his death in an airplane crash in 1964. Editing a weekly paper might be enough for most; for Smith it was but a beginning. He also served as a school board member, a justice of the peace, a volunteer firefighter, a Boy Scout leader and a passionate voice – in print and in person – for the preservation of Tombstone’s historic structures. A North Dakota native, Smith came to Tombstone in 1936. After he purchased the paper from Cole, he began to pursue the thread that Kelly had initiated in the 1920s. That effort lay in foregrounding Tombstone’s “wild west” period. As more and more time separated the Old West as experienced from the Old West as artifact, Smith believed that it was in the town’s best interest to embrace that heady frontier moment. Toward that end, Smith used the pages of the Epitaph to present historical sketches on Tombstone’s past. He encouraged researchers to use the Epitaph’s files – an open-door policy that produced Douglas Martin’s award- winning book, Tombstone’s Epitaph. And he took a leading role in each year’s Helldorado celebration, which featured re-enactments of Tombstone’s memorable moments.
In the immediate aftermath of Smith’s death in January 1964, his widow, Mabel, published the paper for
several months. Then an important period of transition began, when Detroit, Mich., investors, headed by
attorney Harold O. Love, purchased the Epitaph along with other Tombstone landmarks, including the O.K.
Corral, the Crystal Palace and Schieffelin Hall. For the next decade, the Epitaph was capably edited by
Wayne Winters, an Arizona newspaperman, with extensive background in both printing and mining.
In 1974, Love and his colleagues, including Clayton, a Detroit advertising executive, pursued plans to
launch a new edition. As envisioned in early planning sessions, the National Edition would be an
historical journal of the Old West, broadly defined. While it would never lose touch with its Tombstone
roots, the National Edition would take the entire West in the second half the 19th century as its canvas. At
the same time, the weekly Epitaph would continue as the local paper for Tombstone’s 1,500 residents. To
accomplish the restructuring of the publications, the Epitaph corporation hired E. Dean Prichard, a long-
time newsman and writer, to edit the new National Edition and Frederick A. Schoemehl, then a reporter at
a California daily newspaper, to edit the weekly edition and to assist Prichard with the monthly. Within a
year, the weekly editor’s job had been assumed by Don Cantrell, another Southern California newsman.
Then came a novel turn of events: the corporation decided to meet with the University of Arizona
Department of Journalism to discuss a partnership whereby journalism students would produce the local
edition. This would give them practical experience in all aspects of newspaper production, including
reporting, writing, editing, photography, design and printing. The U of A journalism department continues
to publish the Epitaph’s local edition, on a bi-weekly basis, during the regular school year.
Between 1975 and the late 1990s, editorial management of the National Edition, with subscribers
throughout the United States and many foreign countries, passed from Prichard to Clayton and back to
Prichard following Clayton’s death in 1998. From Tombstone to Virginia City to Bodie; from the “Last
Stand” at Little Big Horn to the Massacre at Wounded Knee; from Pat Garrett to Billy the Kid; from Wyatt
Earp to Pinkerton detectives; from the photography of Evelyn Cameron to Mollie O’Bryan’s seat on the
mining exchange, the National Edition has continued to bring a lively mix of stories and photographs on
events, places and people associated with the history and culture of the Old West. For Clayton, the high
point of his editorship was the addition of The Tombstone Epitaph as a national journalistic landmark by
Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists.
Prichard’s 33-year association with the National Edition ended tragically in August 2006 when he suffered
serious, irreversible injuries during a fall at his Arizona ranch. Unable to continue, the Epitaph turned to
Schoemehl, who holds a doctorate in U. S. history, to become editor of the monthly edition. “My desire is to
showcase the history of the Old West in as accurate, entertaining and readable ways as we can,”
Schoemehl said. “I want our readers to receive a monthly package that reflects the depth and breadth of
the West, as it was experienced in its frontier period and as we remember that period today.” Schoemehl
is also working to improve the Epitaph’s visibility through the recent launch of this website,
thetombstoneepitaph.com, and improvements to the paper’s historic printing museum in Tombstone.
Your comments are invited at info@thetombstoneepitaph.com
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