Contention City

Two prospectors tracked their runaway mules one morning and found silver gleaming where a dragged chain had scraped away the dirt. Ed Williams and Jack Friday had stumbled into territory Ed Schieffelin considered his own. The dispute was settled by splitting the claim: the upper end became the Grand Central Mine, the lower end went to Schieffelin and was named the Contention — after the argument that earned it.

By 1879, a mill town had risen 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 renamed the Head Center, and the Contention mill — crushed ore into fine powder for smelting. The Grand Central mill operated two miles south. The town was surveyed that September, lots sold fast, and the post office opened April 6, 1880. At its peak in the mid-1880s, the population reached around 200. A railroad depot went up in 1882.

The town collected its share of history. After the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Ike Clanton tried to bring Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to trial here after Tombstone's grand jury declined to indict. No trial was ever held in Contention City either. In 1886, Sheriff John Slaughter raided a house where members of the Jack Taylor Gang were hiding. When Manuel Robles and Nieves Deron came up shooting rather than surrender, Slaughter mortally wounded Deron — taking one bullet that clipped his ear lobe, the only wound he sustained.

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.

What remains — scattered adobe walls, cellar holes, rows of fence posts, a small cemetery — sits within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, reachable by trails along the river.