In the earliest days in the mining camps around Tombstone, residents would camp wherever they found space. Once someone pitched a tent, no one challenged their right to be there. That spirit of friendliness ended in March 1879 when The Tombstone Townsite Company (TTC) laid out a townsite in a flat area called Goose Flats. The 320-acre site was in a grid that contained four named streets and 12 numbered streets. The townsite was named Tombstone after the first silver strike in the area. The TTC filed a townsite claim at the United States Land Office in Florence and recorded it at the Pima County Recorder's Office. Unfortunately, they made a significant mistake and failed to apply for a patent for the land, and that oversight would lead to years of frustration and fighting. For the record, a patent is a Federal Government instrument used to award someone the title to public land.
A lively real estate business grew in 1879 Tombstone, even though the land belonged to the federal government. TTC began selling deeds to residents living on the lots in the city, but those deeds were worthless since TTC did not own the land. Thus, people who purchased TTC deeds were often put in the precarious position of defending their property rights from "jumpers" who may also want that exact location.
On November 1, 1879, a group of 42 citizens petitioned the Pima County supervisors to incorporate the village of Tombstone. They hoped that this legal action would help end the selling of bogus deeds. As part of the incorporation process, William Harwood was elected mayor, four men were elected to the Council, and Fred White was elected Marshal. By US law, an incorporated village could apply for a patent issued to the mayor, who would hold it in trust for the people living in the village. That trust would be administered according to regulations established by the territorial legislature.
The TTC had five principals, and most went to lengths to hide their involvement. The central operator, James S. Clark, placed his son Maurice E. Clark's name on the patent application; Maurice was a minor studying in Germany who had no knowledge of the scheme. Another partner, Joseph C. Palmer, likewise used his son's name. Most remarkably, one of the five was Anson P. K. Safford, who had served as Arizona's territorial governor from 1869 to 1877 and used his Eastern political connections to attract mining capital to the territory. He quietly sold his share for $1.00 in February 1880 to distance himself before things became public. The street-level agent for the company was Mike Gray, a Texas Ranger veteran who arrived in Tombstone in 1879, bought out the remaining TTC interests, and became the face of what residents knew as Clark, Gray & Company.
In January 1880, there was another election in Tombstone. One of the original council members, Alder Randall, was elected mayor, and Mike Gray was elected to replace Randall on the Council. This change in city leadership set up the circumstances for the fraud to follow.
In early 1880, TTC provided the capital for the mayor and Council to file a patent claim for Tombstone, and one of the TTC owners went to Washington to help shepherd the process. Then, on May 22, 1880, before the patent had even been granted, Mayor Randall secretly deeded 2,168 of Tombstone's 2,394 town lots to TTC. The deed was kept hidden until August 1, when it became known by accident. Immediately, five citizens retained attorney Wells Spicer — who would later preside over the O.K. Corral inquest — to draft a formal remonstrance to the US Land Office. Spicer argued that the Arizona statute giving the Townsite Company occupant status was unconstitutional under federal preemption law, and in a letter to the GLO commissioner he called the operation "a fraud run by a lot of hoodlums." The remonstrance was accompanied by a petition bearing 259 signatures, with petitioners warning of potential "bloodshed" if the fraud were allowed to stand. TTC then began pressuring residents on those lots to pay for their deeds.
Several mine owners already had patents for a significant portion of the townsite (see the following illustration). The owner of the Gilded Age mine, Edward Field, protested to the US Land Office that the TTC had no legal authority to award deeds to property on his claim and federal mining law seemed to back that contention. In March 1880, Field filed suit against TTC to establish ownership of the surface of his claim, and the judge ruled in his favor. That meant that squatters on the Gilded Age claim had to do business with Field rather than TTC. Despite the judge's order concerning the Gilded Age, TTC continued to issue deeds for lots on the surface of that mine. Moreover, on November 16, an agent from TTC with a shotgun prohibited workers from entering the Gilded Age mine. Field went to Tucson "looking for his rights." While he was gone, someone built a cabin over the mine shaft.
There were potentially three different groups that now claimed the right to issue property deeds: TTC, the mayor, and the mine owners. Understandably, citizens and business owners in Tombstone were concerned about making improvements on their property when they did not have a clear deed. For example, the October 24, 1880, edition of the Epitaph contained a notice from M. E. Clark (an alias for James Clark, one of the TTC partners). That notice said that people should not buy or negotiate with anyone else for his lots since they were "duly deeded to me by the Mayor of Tombstone." In that same issue of the paper, though, was a notice by Justice of the Peace James Reilly. That notice pointed out that "M. E. Clark, in whose name the above notice is published, has never been in this Territory, nor can I find, after diligent inquiry, one creditable person who has ever seen him or her."
The federal government issued the Tombstone patent on September 22, 1880, addressed not to the mayor but to James S. Clark himself, despite the law requiring it to be held in trust for the citizens. When word spread that the patent was coming, Mayor Randall slipped out of town on the night of November 8 and rode to Tucson to secretly record the deed transferring the lots to Clark and his partners before anyone could intervene. Diarist George Parsons wrote that Randall had become "afraid of hemp" — frontier shorthand for a noose. In the days before and after Randall's flight, Parsons joined nightly protest meetings at the corner of Fifth and Allen Streets, where crowds gathered with lanterns and bonfires. When a Citizens' League meeting exposed the full depth of the corruption, Parsons recorded the bribe that had driven it: Randall's own words had been that "there's more sugar in the other crowd" — Clark, Gray & Co. had paid more than the citizens could. Randall had reportedly been promised $2,500 for his part in delivering the deed. A Citizens' League was then formed, raised nearly $1,000 in its first week, and filed a lawsuit to contest the transfer, but that lawsuit ultimately failed to stop it.
In December 1880, Justice of the Peace Reilly left town on business, and while he was gone, about 12 men pulled down the fence around his property and physically moved his house partially into the street since they said he was on TTC property without a deed. Marshal Ben Sippy stopped this proceeding. Parsons was among those who helped restore the house, recording the moment in his journal: "at the word, we all made a rush and in a very few minutes had the house back where it belonged. There was much enthusiasm. Clark was present at the commencement, speedily left, and with Gray, kept away — a very prudent idea. Few words and quick action. Was among the first and did my share. Was called Trojan. Well, that's over and the Citizens won."
In January 1881, another election was held, and John Clum — editor of the Tombstone Epitaph and the Citizens' League's most prominent public voice — was elected mayor by a margin of 532 votes to 165, sweeping the entire Citizens' League ticket by similar margins. Clum waged war on the TTC and began issuing mayor's deeds to actual occupants at $10 per lot. During the spring and summer of 1881, several court cases were decided. One of the most important affirmed that Edward Field, the owner of the Gilded Age mine, had possession of the lots covered by the mining claim. After that, he was threatened using pictures of coffins and was shot at more than once. The other court cases, in general, were decided against TTC and found that it was illegal for the previous mayor, Alder Randall, to issue deeds to TTC rather than the citizens.
Over the summer and fall of 1881, the Vizina, Mountain Maid, and Gilded Age filed suits against squatters who had not negotiated with them for their lots, even if those people had purchased deeds from TTC.
There is evidence that the "cowboys" were terrorizing Tombstone citizens at the behest of TTC. In October 1880, Marshal Fred White was gunned down after enforcing land ownership laws that favored the squatters over TTC. Wells Fargo's undercover agent Fred Dodge, who was present in Tombstone at the time, later reflected on the murder: "Who had the motive? Clark and Gray!" During the summer of 1881, Marshal Ben Sippy took a "leave of absence" after protecting citizens from the Townsite Company's aggressions, and was last seen on a train traveling through New Mexico. Some historians believe that his bones are somewhere at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft. In December 1881, there was an attempt on the life of Mayor John Clum, Judge Wells Spicer received a threatening letter, and Marshal Virgil Earp was shot and maimed. All three men had been active opponents of the Townsite Company. As a result of uncertain land ownership, people were hesitant to improve their property. For example, in 1882, a city health official noted a large amount of stagnant water, but people were unwilling to pay for a sewer system since they had no clear deed to their property.
The courts eventually rendered their verdict. In 1885 the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Mayor Randall's deed to TTC was "a legal and actual fraud which ought not to be countenanced for a moment." Before his departure, Clark's Tombstone residence had been blown up on January 4, 1887, by dynamite hidden in the stove. Mrs. Clark suffered multiple skull fractures but survived. Clark was in Washington at the time pressing Civil War cotton claims; Sheriff John Slaughter posted a $250 reward that was never collected. James S. Clark died in Washington in October 1889, described as being "almost in abject poverty." His scheme had enriched no one, least of all himself.
In April 1892, the United States Supreme Court dismissed the Town-Site Cases, not on the merits but because neither side had paid the clerk's fees required to print 25 copies of their briefs. The case simply expired for want of a printing bill. That no one had the money or motivation to pay it was its own commentary on how thoroughly the boom era had ended.
Most of the remaining principals left town in the 1890s and early 1900s, and most lawsuits became moot. As the mines closed and the population declined, the question of land ownership became less pressing. But the legacy of the fraud persisted for nearly 70 years. In 1946 the Arizona legislature passed a law specifying that anyone in actual possession of a parcel who had paid taxes on it for five years might apply for a mayor's deed. Perhaps that is a fitting end to a terrible chapter in the city's history.
One quietly satisfying footnote: James Reilly, the Justice of the Peace who had been repeatedly sued, fined, and had his own house moved into the street, outlasted nearly every principal in the controversy. He died in Long Beach, California, in 1909, leaving an estate of $100,000 — probably larger than the estates of most of the mine owners and speculators who had tormented him.
Sources
- Henry P. Walker, "Arizona Land Fraud: Model 1880 — The Tombstone Townsite Company," Arizona and the West, vol. 21, no. 1 (Spring 1979), pp. 5–36. Primary source for all TTC principals and their backgrounds, the patent timeline, the Citizens' League, Wells Spicer's role as remonstrance attorney, and the litigation history through the 1892 Supreme Court dismissal.
- George W. Parsons, Journal, Volume 1 (March 27, 1879 – June 27, 1882), Arizona Historical Society. Source for the protest bonfires at Fifth and Allen Streets, Randall's bribery admission ("more sugar in the other crowd"), the December 1880 building-moving incident ("Was called Trojan. Well, that's over and the Citizens won"), and Parsons' role as Clum's campaign chairman in the January 1881 election.