Contention City

Two prospectors tracked their runaway mules one morning and found metal gleaming where the dragging chains had scraped dirt away. Silver — enough to start a war over ownership. Ed Williams and Jack Friday had walked straight into Ed Schieffelin's claimed territory, and Schieffelin, who'd already staked much of the Tombstone district, wasn't inclined to share. The dispute was settled by splitting the claim in two: the upper end became the Grand Central Mine, the lower the Contention — named for the argument that earned it.

By 1879, a mill town rose on the east bank of the San Pedro River. Tombstone's mines had silver but no water; Contention City had the river. Two stamp mills — the Sunset (later the Head Center) and the Contention mill — crushed ore into fine powder for smelting, processing up to 200 tons a day. The town was surveyed that September, lots sold fast, and within months over a hundred people had arrived. A post office opened April 6, 1880. At its peak in the mid-1880s, the population reached 200: John McDermott's saloon, the Western Hotel, a blacksmith, a butcher, general stores, a Chinese laundry, stage lines to Tombstone and Tucson. A railroad depot went up in 1882 when the New Mexico and Arizona Railroad pushed through.

After the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Ike Clanton tried to bring Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to trial here when Tombstone's grand jury wouldn't indict. No trial was ever held. In 1886, Sheriff John Slaughter raided a house in town where four wanted members of the Jack Taylor Gang were hiding. When Manuel Robles and Nieves Deron came up shooting rather than surrender, Slaughter killed Robles' brother and mortally wounded Deron — taking one bullet that clipped his ear, the only wound he'd sustain.

Then Tombstone found water, built its own mills, and the San Pedro sites became redundant. The mines flooded after the 1887 Sonora earthquake. The post office closed November 26, 1888. By 1890, the town was gone.

Today: scattered adobe walls, cellar holes, fence-post rows, a small cemetery — all within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, reachable by trails along the river.