BAD MEN OF THE WILD WEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 24, 27 July 1940, Page 18

BAD MEN OF THE WILD WEST

T)EEP in the still almost uninhabited rangelands and mountains of the West, there are many spots that reflect more colourfully than the grandiose monuments built by modern hands the drama and the pioneering spirit of the generation that lived when there was still a frontier on American soil, writes John L. Mortimer in the "New York Times."

Because of the vastness of the West there are few roads even today into numbers of picturesque sections, but for the true explorer there are hundreds of markers where he may pay tribute to a day that was as boisterous as it was hardy—little-known graves of men whose names have gone down for ever into American history, ruins of towns shrouded in romance, sites of spirited battles between Indians and early settlers or soldiers.

for the graves of the famous outlaws and their opponents in the Western country that resounded to the roar of pistol fire when law was taming wild country.

Perhaps the three most famous graveyards in the West—still seldom

visited and generally off the beaten tourist paths—are those at Tombstone, Arizona, where are buried some 300

This summer will see thousands of tourists on their first visit into the West. For many of them these old landmarks and history-cloaked sites will exert a powerful appeal. One of the most unusual sources of exploration, Westerners declare, is the search persons who died with their boots on; at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where lies the body of Billy the Kid and his two chief lieutenants; and the Boothill Cemetery of Old Tascosa, Texas, along the route of the trail-drivers and the happy-go-lucky young cowpunchers of the old Texas Panhandle. .

Tombstone lies far down in Southern Arizona, circled by lofty, sand burned hills, where the heat radiates in ever-increasing circles and the air is almost dry enough to dehydrate the silent old desert rat.

It is known as the "town that was too tough to die," and even today such old establishments as the Crystal Palace Bar and the Bird Cage Theatre still exist. About the heart of the town itself stand adobe buildings that roared with business and ribald amuse-