In 1877, about the same time that Captain Whitside was sent to southeast Arizona to locate a site for a military camp, which turned out to be Camp (later Fort) Huachuca, a German from Pennsylvania was prospecting in northern Arizona.
While prospecting up in the Walaipai country, Ed Schieffelin heard that a group of Walaipai Indians had enlisted as scouts to serve at the new Camp Huachuca. Ed tagged along, thinking it was a good opportunity for prospecting. He arrived in Camp Huachuca about the beginning of April. After a few forays with the scouts, Ed decided to remain in the hills east of the San Pedro River on his own. Despite the soldiers' gloomy predictions that he would find nothing but his tombstone, Ed held out, prospecting with his pick in one hand and his Sharps rifle in the other, his mule as alert to danger as the best watchdog.
Ed knew he was on to something but was unable to find backers for his mine--and he was dead broke himself. He took a trip to Tucson to show his pieces of ore around, but no one was interested. Finally, Ed traveled back to northern Arizona where his brother Al was working with Richard Gird. Gird, an assayer, liked Ed's samples, and the three set out together to find the silver in the Tombstone Hills. They had soon staked out the Lucky Cuss and the Toughnut mines.
As soon as these discoveries were known, a rush began and Tombstone became a boom town. But it takes substantial capital to develop a silver mine, and Ed was more interested in prospecting than in becoming a city businessman. He packed up and went out prospecting for four months. When he got back he found that Al had a buyer for their claims in the mines. Al and Ed sold out for $600,000 each. Richard Gird took his payment in company stock and eventually made considerably more profit. A conservative estimate of the Tombstone mines' production is about $40 million in 1870s dollars with an approximate modern value of $1.7 billion.
The Town of Tombstone
The town of Tombstone was laid out in 1879 about a mile from the first Schieffelin camp. At its peak the population probably reached 8,000 although some estimates claimed twice that number. Like any mining town it attracted its share of drifters, dancehall girls, saloonkeepers and gamblers.
There was also a dangerous group of backcountry toughs called "cow-boys," who lived by stealing cattle and robbing stagecoaches. (In Cochise County in the 1880s it was an insult to call a man a "cow-boy." You were calling him a horse thief, a robber and an outlaw. Legitimate cattlemen were generally called herders or ranchers.)
Although the crime wave of the 1880s is associated with Tombstone because of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, most of the serious crimes were in fact committed outside the town along the smuggling route through Skeleton Canyon or on the dark and lonely roads linking Benson, Contention City, Charleston and Tombstone. Charleston, a silver-milling town along the San Pedro River, was generally thought to be a tougher place than Tombstone.
Formation of Cochise County
As the eastern area of huge Pima County became more populous, the citizens began campaigning to have their own county, to avoid having to make the long trip to Tucson to conduct their business. In 1881 Cochise County was split off from Pima with the new county seat established at Tombstone.
John Behan was appointed as the first sheriff of Cochise County, serving in 1881-2. Not a strong sheriff, he was considered too friendly with the "cow-boy" element and was not completely trusted by Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and other lawmen. Sometimes prisoners "escaped" from Behan's care. In 1882 an investigation was begun into irregularities during his term of office. Facing a grand jury, Behan left the county. In 1887 he was employed as a guard at the Yuma prison.