CHARLESTON-THE TOWN THAT NEVER GREW OLD

As “Judge” Handy, proceeding homeward alone after an evening at Harry Queen's saloon, suddenly felt himself dabbing. The shock of falling solvent him to the point of grabbing firmly to the creosoted beam which the backbar was brewed into the open wall. The only other thing that occurred to him was to yell.

What startled the loud standing to him, emerged from the wallboard in candied green; and it was quite some time before anyone bowed. It took the “Judge” a while to live that one down, because after his “micas” it became apparent ent that, during all the time he was digging, his feet were within six inches of the dry bottom of an unfinished well.

This was not an isolated incident in Charleston, Arizona, a tiny city of nearly a thousand inhabitants in the early 1880's, mainly weary dwelling but its own well. In view of the town's location among the cactus-crowned hills thirty miles north of the Mexican border, this fact at first Actually, this abundance of water, the very reason for her being, is a logical consequence of the geographical Fiesta. The barren hills here slope abruptly to the bed of the San Pedro River which flows in Old Mexico.

In 1879 there was guts enough in the narrow valley to sustain several historical band and cattle. Then, to, Apache well angled among the west and doctor foes Mexico, but the Indians, story, the Geronimo and the apache, were confined in the reservation at San Carlos. John Slaughter, Old Man Clanton, and one or two other ranches regarded thick occasional appearances as a natural hazard in a class with coyotes and rattlesnakes. Urmenr the canyon the prickly squatting rivet was undisturbed.

A company town, she was easily notched into a bend at the river and nestled close to the rocky hills at the canyon's entrance. Apparently sprung full-fledged from her nest, she had never experienced the spangling cloud-meet of infancy. Her houses were seldom mostly, impolitely shang that sinight, martuar stowebs stroopking wigsward over the thkaland. They were substantially belle mant with wooden floors nod plastered walls.

The tan-stamp mill opened on the east bank opposite, had been constructed at prices the ore being leached out of this bustling little miner base Tombstone where water was in short supply. The river bed had been dammed about a mile to the south, and water was led to the mill through a wooden flume. The place buzzed and rumbled endlessly and streamers of smoke poured incessantly from tiny tall stacks.

Clouds of dust, too, obscured the valley, rising above the eight miles of road to Tombstone as eighteenand twenty-four-horse teams struggled back and forth with the ore-laden, high-wheeled wagons.

The hills had a fine slope to accommodate the milling machinery and, there was room in the flats for partly a dozen houses, a Chinese restaurant, a blacksmith shop and stables for the mules.

The solidly constructed image of the refiner's quarters, which also housed the offices of the Tombstone Mine and Milling Company, was situated on a terrace partly shored up by a wall of native stone. Other stone walls were necessary to prevent erosion of some of the building sites and roads. These walls have lasted so well and can be easily seen today from the Southern Pacific Railroad track which borders the river. Of the buildings themselves, only a few adobe walls remain.

There was no railroad here in the eighties, however. When the silver bullion was ready for shipment, it had to be transported thirty miles to Benson, which town was established for that purpose when the S.P. track between Tucson and Deming New Mexico was completed in 1880. Charlestonians were proud of the fact that of the nearly one and a half million dollars in bullion that was transported by stage between April, 1880, and April, 1882, not one ounce was stolen nor was the payroll ever molested.

Charleston was remote, but no bucolic maiden for all that. Not unlike in the manner of the four-year-old Montana settlement at St. David downstream, nor thunderously aggressive as were some contemporary towns, she was cunning, a quiet sophisticate. If this successor stands or exists, let's have a look at the record.

She boasted four huge mercantile establishments where nearly everything could be purchased. The Tucson and Tombstone papers arrived daily by Wells Fargo Stage as did the mail, express and passengers. There were a drug store, a butcher's shop, a telegraph office in its own building, a customs house, two Chinese laundries and three Chinese restaurants. There were two large hotels, the Eagle and the Royal, as well as Mrs. Hughes' boardinghouse.

In such establishments, fastidious drinkers were accustomed to being served beverages not only mixed but on the rocks. Thanks to one of the newly invented ice-making machines, Charleston's ice plant was solo to supply the local needs and also export ice to Tombstone. Inevitably there were more than enough saloons. Ex-residents years later recalled the number as anywhere from five to thirteen. Some of them catered to a motley crew. Curly Bill Brocious and the McLowery gang, Old Man Chacon and his boys, and Johnny Ringo were habitues. The fact that things were said to be pretty boisterous around men like these soon gave rise to Charleston's reputation as a den of cattle rustlers and a gambling hell.

The facts appear somewhat lese colorfal. The late Mrs. Edith Dorsey of Oakland, California, reminiscing In a letter now in the files of the Arbona Pioneers Historical Society at Tucson, recalled a day when her mother was planning a trip to Tombstone. Ten-year-old Edith was to be left at home with a young friend. Suddenly there was a clarter of hoofs on de bridge followed by cac-splitting yells punctasted by a rat-a-car of shots. A ckud of dust billowed up the street from which Curly Bill and two of his pals emerged. They tied up in front of the hotel next donc and loudly asked for rooms, Mrs. Dorsey's mother soon made it clear to the hotel's proprietor that she was considering it unsafe to leave the girls within gun ronge of sach rowdies. A few minutes later, Curly Bill knocked as the door and sheepishly explained that they had meant no han.

"You just go shed to Tozbatents, Ma'am," he said. "You don't need to worry about a thing."

Mrs. Dorsey's mother went and the incident was soon forgotten. But there were others, like the oft-told tale of Curly's forcing the harried Reverend Josak Brown to preach him a lengthy sermon one Sunday.

morning and dance a bullet-inspired jig for an encore. The whole town censored Brocions that day. And they all turned out for the evening service including Billy and bis fellow-patrons of Schwertz's bar, which Jocked its doors for an hour and handed over the last hour's take to swall the collection in the Reverend's beaver bat.

Other incidents ware as amusing. It is an est lished fect that Carly Bill was guilty of the Sicsbsto Отуюп пивинскe. The Cantons undoubtedly ruzled ivundreds of dollars' worth of cattle, althougis nous of then was ever convicted. The McLowery gang wts thoroughly unsavory entfr. But in Charleston they be haved reasonably wall.

According to one old-tinser, "There was never any vics or petty crime in town." This was largely due to the unique methods of the town's constable, Jim nate. The story goes that shining to make the office self sustaining, when he confronted a ribereant on the server, he arrested him, sentenced him on the spot, collected the fine at the point of a sawed-off shor gun sad pocketed the money. Thers was no jail.

And that gaarled old cottonwood on Main Street was wit a hanging tres. During Charleston's heyday, eighty years ago, it was a mere sapling. There was actusily a scarcity of trees. Firewood was haaled from the Wher snomes thirty miles wway.

There was ons attempted lyaching but the intended victim was whisked away to Tombstone and delivered safely into the custody of the town marshall there. That was Jolmny Behind-the-Dence who, in a sorpid rage one frosty morning, shot and killed chief engineer, Henry Schneider. He broke jail in Tucson before his trial and disappeared.

A year later, M. R. Peel (again, chief engineer) was instantly killed in an ill-fated attempt at a payroll robbery bury as as he stood stood just just inside the door of the company office. Billy Grounds, one of the gunmen, was killed while resisting arrest the next day. His companion, Zwing Hunt, was wounded, recuperated while in custody in Tombstone and escaped before trial.

But for the most part, life proceeded normally. Children went to Sunday School in the adobe church and during the week attended classes in the little frame building west of town.

Professor Wetherspoon, one of the town's first teachers, was apparently a common-sense man. One uncorroborated account recalls his having installed a shelf just inside the schoolhouse door where young gun owners were asked to park their weapons during school hours. When they protested, their parents backed up the teacher and there was no more danger shooting through the windows during study hours.

These same parents voted to move the dance hall out of town and move it they did, closer to Fort Huachuca where the youngsters weren't able to hang around waiting through the windows after school. This, after some of the girls had expressed yearnings to be dance hall girls when they grew up.

Actually, the back of Charleston's citizenry seems to have been a law-abiding, hard-working lot: Experienced mill men, they had been dazed by news of fabulous strikes in the south. They stayed because the work was steady and the pay was good.

But it was noisy.

Wandering among the ruins now, one finds that hard to imagine. Under the towering cottonwoods, the mesquite has closed in, hiding the crumbling walls and deadening sound. The call of an unseen bird is startling. The only sound of which one is conscious is that of the river burbling over its rocky bed.

The river went unheard in the eighties. The stamp mill boomed and rumbled day and night, seven days a week. Ore wagons creaked and groaned, whips cracked, drivers cursed and bellowed. The males themselves added voice to the racket. Livery rigs rattled as horses clipclopped over the wooden, single-span bridge.

Children shouted at play all over town. There was nearly always a Mexican burro train tied up somewhere, their tinkling bells adding a holiday note to the medley of Spanish and English voices. A pleasant sing-song rose rom the flat along the river where the the Chinese busily bu cultivated their vegetable gardens. There was guitar music and loud laughter up and down Main Street late into the evening.

And gunfire.

Charleston literally lived and died to the sound of gunfire. Scarcely an hour passed when someone didn't pop off a few shots, usually just in good spirits. And when the mill shet down, when the antimacassars and the oil lamps had been carefully packed and stowed, when the children had been collected and the last wagonhad rattled across the bridge, a bunch of the boys came back and shot up the town. Just for the hell of it.

That doesn't mean that any bullet hole you may find is a souvenir of that summer of '85. Trenches, barbed wire entanglements and other odd bits and pieces were left behind by the 93rd Infantry Division who used the place as a training ground during World War IL. Just across the fence from the army cemetery northwest of town is the Bombing Range which is still in use. So don't stray too far.

The east river bank where troopers once raced their horses for high stakes is now a popular picnic spot. Nearly any Sunday finds a party or two loitering among the ruins or looking for Indian writing on the rocks. There are a number of good specimens of these petroglyphs quite near the old mill. In making photographs, try using a green filter over your lens.

This is dangerous ground for small children or the unwary adult, for there are at least two deep vertical shafts uncovered and unmarked.

Charleston is easily reached by taking the dirt road between Sierra Vista and Tombstone. Just east of the railroad crossing eight miles southwest of Tombstone, several dirt tracks lead north into the brush. Park your car here and proceed on foot east across the arroyo to the mill or west through the culvert to the river.

To reach the old town you must wade the river. In the eighties it was one-third wider and deeper. The wooden bridge of which there is now no trace, crossed at a spot a few hundred yards north of the calvert: an the foot of the hill on the east bank. (Remember, there was no railroad then.) If you cross at the site of the old bridge and continse west across the flat, you will discover a nearly overgrown opening in the mesquite which was the main road Into town. Main Street swings off to the left where two enormous cottonwood trees and a jungle of mesquite hide the crumbling walls of several sizable buildings, Four mercantile establishments conducted business here, the value of their stocks estimated at between $50,000 and $100,000. The building on your left as you turned the corner was "The Chinaman's" (a restaurant) where Henry Schneider had just finished breakfast when he was encountered at the bridge by Jobuny Behind-the-Denc It is nearly impossible now to identify any of the buildings with certainty but heaps of broken bottles mark the sites of two or three saloons. The large coin deeper in the jungle was probably a hotel. On the south, the river bank has eroded until some of the battered walls stand perilously close to the edge.

The frame schoolhouse with its hand-carpentered desks and benches, has long since disappeared. It was situated west of the edge of town close by the livery stables, as was the early custom in western towns so that children from outlying ranches ranches could board their horses while school was in session.

Leaving town the way we came in, we'll stand at the bridge with the uneasy shade of badman, Johnny Ringo. He stands with his gun at the ready and halted at the opposite end of the bridge are three horsemen, surprised and somewhat apprehensive. Marshall Earp, his brother, Virgil, and Doc Holliday, supposing Johnny safely in jail, have come to arrest Curly Bill for his part in a stagecoach robbery. Johnny, hearing of the plan, has quietly put up bail and slipped into Charleston to relieve his unsuspecting friend.

"Stay where you are," he says, "or die." The three horsemen hesitate for only an instant then turn on their tracks. Tomorrow Johnny will return to Tombstone in time for his hearing.

The shades of many others hover around the spot. While their earthly footsteps echoed across the bridge, the country grew apace. The new copper mining camp at Bisbee flourished. Tombstone was made seat of the newly created Cochise County. Geronimo surrendered for the last time and settlers flocked into the territory.

In New York and other cosmopolitan areas, the telephone was in use and gas lights were being replaced by electricity. The Brooklyn Bridge was finally completed. There was such a large surplus in the U.S. Treasury that suggestions for spending it vied with the Chinese Immigrant problem as a topic of conversation.

Then came the depression. The price of silver dropped. Underground water hindered operations in the Tombstone mines. The disastrous fire in the surface works of the Grand Central Mine in 1886 signaled the end.

After the exodus of the mill men, drifters had camped in Charleston's empty buildings. To many who had been living in tents or brash shacks on the river banks, four walls constituted a mansion. (The doors, window frames and sidewalks had long since been used for firewood.) For a time it looked as though she might become a slack town in the manner of many deserted cities. But this was not to be.

The final act was heralded by a more ominous sound than gunfire. This subterranean rambling foretold an act of God.

On the afternoon of May 3, 1887, the earth quaked violently for thirty seconds. Boulders crashed down the mountain sides striking sparks and setting fire to the grass up and down the valley. Water spurted from cracks in the earth. Spring-fed streams suddenly stopped flowing.

No building in Charleston was left intact. Not one was safe to live in. The drifters huddled in the streets, sheltered only by the pall of smoke that hung over the valley for days. Ashes gently sifted to earth, blanketed the river until the fish, gulping, floated belly-up.

Fear stalked the area as tremors continued intermittently for nearly three weeks. Rumors of volcanoes and lava flows were current. No attempt was made to rebuild the town. Not then or ever after.

Scouring rains washed the soil away from the fireweakened grass roots. Thorny brush took its place. The sparse mesquite had been destroyed. There was neither shade nor browse for the livestock. Following the lead of John Slaughter who had moved to the San Bernardino Ranch each three years years before, discouraged cattlemen soon left the valley to its desolation. The Mexican trade began to funnel through Nogales. With Slaughter wearing the Sheriff's badge, outlaws found that crime didn't pay and looked for greener pastures.

Soon there was once more just the lonely river, murmuring quietly as it does today. North and east around the bend from where we crossed it, the stream bed squeezes through a canyon. As early as 1887, the water users of the valley considered building a dam at this spot to control the summer floods and provide a reservoir for irrigation purposes. Soon after the Bureau of Reclamation was created in 1goz, its construction was officially proposed.

The Benson Signal in December, 1919, reported that there were "strong indications that practical work is to be begun in the very near future." Headlines in the Tombstone Epitaph for June 24, 1926, announced "Engineers State Work on New Dam Should Be Under Way Within 12 Months."

In January, 1962, the Bureau of Reclamation issued an appraisal report on the Central Arizona Project, Its purpose is to update the original plan in anticipation of a settlement of the long-standing controversy between California, and Arizona over division and use of Colorado River water. Construction of the Charleston Dam and reservoir is included in the plan. The proposed dam would rise 138 feet above the stream bed and impound 238,000 acre feet of water.

Residents of the San Pedro Valley hope the Colorado water question will soon be settled and construction of the Charleston Dam begun. They foresee not only an end to the periodic rampages of the river but the valley's rebirth as a sportsman's paradise and recreation center.

The river will rise quietly, stealthily, reaching to the edge of the river bank, to the top of the wall, finally above the tree tops. Charleston, born an adult, deceased in childhood, never had time to find herself. Possibly a lake is needed to end her story. Lying beneath the warer in quiet beyond imagining, undisturbed forevermore, perhaps she can at last give up the ghost.