TOMBSTONE: SHOOT FIRST, DRAW TOURISTS LATER.

Byline: Eric Noland Travel Editor

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. - Guns blazed, blood was spilt, and three lives were stubbed out at a horse stable here 121 years ago.

Yes, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a true-life event, but visitors to Tombstone will have to apply their imagination vigorously to get a sense of it and other remnants from the notorious past of this Old West town.

The corral is now enclosed by towering, solid walls - some 8 feet tall - so that people who haven't paid a required admission fee won't be able to steal a peek at it.

Once inside this vault, you might be dismayed to find that the principals in the shootout - Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Ike Clanton, et al - are represented with absurd mannequin figures. Several times a day, the gunfight is re-enacted by actors at a stage inside the enclosure, but it costs extra to watch it. A ``historama'' film costs more, too.

You don't rest your boot heels long in Tombstone without gaining a greater appreciation for a place like Columbia State Historic Park in California's Gold Rush country, where a 19th-century town has been faithfully and tastefully restored as an outdoor museum.

Tombstone, in southern Arizona about 70 miles from Tucson, never had the benefit of such scholarly oversight. Its tourist enterprises developed according to what the market would bear: snack food, old-time photo studios, buckboard rides, Indian jewelry, Western wear. Just about every structure of historical significance charges an admission, and every darned one of them herds you through a gift shop on the way out.

The town will also give you ample opportunities to watch mock gunfights. In fact, you'll find dueling gunfights in Tombstone, each set of players insisting that its show is better than the next. The Helldorado shootout ($4 for adults, $1 for kids) was found to be mostly clowning and ad-libbing, but if these thespian shootists maintained historical authenticity, the shows would last only seconds and the cold-bloodedness would surely horrify the kiddies and depress the adults.

Despite all the crass tourist fare, visitors can still gain an appreciation for Tombstone's history; they just have to squint past the hokum and seek out the treasures.

Among the sites worth a look:

--The Bird Cage Theatre (Sixth and Allen streets). ``There were 16 gun and knife battles fought here, and 26 men were killed,'' drawled the man behind the counter without looking up. ``There are more than 140 bullet holes in the walls. Guys shot their guns off in the air instead of applauding.''

The Bird Cage was a saloon, gambling parlor and bordello during Tombstone's brief heyday. Because it was built of adobe, it survived two fires that leveled most of the other buildings in town.

The first floor used to be a wide-open saloon, but a partition was later put in so that admission could be charged ($5). As you head into the inner sanctum, you get the feeling the place hasn't been dusted since about 1890, but that only enhances the glimpse of the 19th-century West it affords.

Ladies of the evening used to sit in second-floor booths and try to catch the eye of patrons on the saloon floor below - these ``cages'' gave the place its name. In the basement are disgustingly dingy rooms that were also used for the trade.

Original gambling tables are on display, set up as if for a card game. You can also see the Boot Hill horse-drawn hearse, which was kept busy carting corpses to the cemetery between 1881 and 1917.

--Tombstone Courthouse (Toughnut and Third streets). The museum in this 1882 brick building is administered as a state historic park, and it has a terrific collection of artifacts.

One item on display, for example, is the coroner's report on John Heith. Sentenced to life in prison for his part in a Bisbee holdup, he was extracted from the courthouse jail by a mob and lynched. The cursive script of the document includes this astonishing conclusion: ``I find that the deceased died of Emphysema of the lungs caused by strangulation self inflicted or otherwise.'' It is signed ``George E. Goodfellow, County Physician.''

Also exhibited in the museum is a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper the day after the O.K. Corral shootout. A rambling account of the incident takes forever to get to the point, and it doesn't provide much specificity - other than who didn't get up. In the account, eyewitnesses describe U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp as ``cool as a cucumber,'' which may be owed to the fact he was the only participant in the gun battle who wasn't hit. Doc Holliday, though struck in the hip by a bullet, was said to be ``as calm as if at target practice, and fired rapidly.''

--Boot Hill Cemetery (off Highway 80, north edge of town). The victims of the O.K. Corral shootout are buried here, along with other fellows who came to untimely ends. There is no cost to visit the cemetery, although donations are requested. A printed guide costs $2. And you have to pass through one of those insidious gift shops on the way to and from the graveyard.

It's sad to note that Tombstone's Chinese residents were buried in a segregated plot and that a couple of women from the late 1800s are listed as suicides.

The cemetery really is on a hill, overlooking a valley to the east. The town did not get its name from the frequency with which grave stones sprouted here, however. Turns out a miner, Ed Schieffelin, left the safety of an Arizona fort in 1877 because he was convinced he'd find silver in the nearby hills. Friends warned him he'd more likely find his tombstone, since the land was Apache country. When Schieffelin hit a major strike, he derisively named it Tombstone, and the shanty town that sprang up came to be known by the same name.

IF YOU GO

To reach Tombstone, take Interstate 10 east from Tucson to Highway 80 south. The drive is about 70 miles. Tombstone Chamber of Commerce: [phone]; www.tombstone.org.

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Photo:

(1 -- color) The Helldorado gunfighters blaze away at a show in Tombstone, where Old West authenticity sometimes gets obscured in an onslaught of tourism and tackiness. There is no denying the town's historical significance, though.

(2) At Tombstone's Boot Hill cemetery, the grave of the victims of the shootout at the O.K. Corral bears a withered marker.

(3) The Tombstone Courthouse, built in 1882, currently houses a museum devoted to the town's nefarious past.

(4) Tombstone's Bird Cage Theatre, a former saloon, gambling joint and bordello, was the site of 16 gun and knife battles in which 26 men were killed.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

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IF YOU GO (see text)