Ed Schieffelin

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Ed Schieffelin in Tombstone. During his time in the West, he endured the desert, heat and Apache threats

Edward Lawrence Schieffelin (1847-May 27, 1897), was a Tioga County, Pennsylvania native who became the founder of Tombstone, Arizona.

Schieffelin lived a relatively quiet life for thirty years, until he decided, in 1877, to travel to California, looking for gold. This was during the California gold rush era.

He ended up as an Indian scout working out of Camp Hauchuca. He kept prospecting in his spare time, and eventually near the San Pedro Valley, Arizona, at a waterless plateau called Goose Flats, he found silver instead of gold. Having been joshed by soldiers about his rock-collecting to the effect that "The only rock you will find out there will be your own tombstone", Schieffelin decided to name the mining claim the "tombstone." Although it took a year to prove that the ore was good, and to locate a sizable vein of it, Schieffelin and several other men finally divided several very valuable mining claims. Originally surveyed as Goose Flats, the town of Tombstone (named after the mine and founded in 1879) boomed into a modern business city of the time, a county seat, and the site of the legendary gunfight near the O.K. Corral.

Schieffelin Hall, an entertainment center built by Ed's brother Al in 1881 at the height of Tombstone's prosperity, remains preserved in Tombstone today.

Tombstone's mines played out in the late 1880's but they had already made Ed Schieffelin a rich man. He left town and traveled widely, but wanted to be returned to Tombstone when he died. He died suddenly of natural causes while prospecting in Oregon in 1897, at the age of 49. He was found alone in his miner's cabin, slumped over valuable samples of ore, origin unknown. His journal said "Struck it rich again, by God!"

As requested in his will, Schieffelin is interred about two miles from Tombstone (at a cemetery located at West Allen street). He was buried as his will specified in mining clothes, with pick, shovel, and his old canteen.