The Tombstone Epitaph

For a town named Tombstone, there could be only one name for the newspaper. The Tombstone Epitaph published its first issue on the first of May, eighteen eighty, founded by an easterner named John Clum who had already worked as a Signal Corps observer, an Apache Indian agent, and a newspaperman before he reached the silver camp. When friends warned him the grim title would kill the paper before it started, Clum answered that no Tombstone is complete without its epitaph, and the name stuck.

Clum was no neutral observer. His paper spoke for the town's business interests and for the Earp brothers in their long feud with the Cowboys, and its reporting on the gunfight of eighteen eighty one remains one of the most important eyewitness records of that day. Clum himself was elected mayor of Tombstone in eighteen eighty one, served as the town's postmaster, and led its citizens vigilance committee.

Remarkably, the Epitaph never died. It is one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in Arizona, and the Society of Professional Journalists has honored it as a national journalistic landmark. The paper that dared to name itself after a grave has outlived nearly everyone who once doubted it.