A black and white photo postcard of the Tombstone High School. The school is two stories high and was built of wood. It has a huge bell tower, and a car is parked next to it. The front caption reads: “High School built in Tombstone, Cochise County, Ariz. Cal Osbon Pho -316-“ The photo is unused, and the publisher is unknown. Glenn Ranch Collection.

Tombstone's first public school was founded in 1879. Ms. Lucas held her classes in a building with a dirt floor and a mud roof. The first principal M.M. Sherman took over in September 1881. They had no proper desks at first, using wood planks in their place. Sherman secured proper desks for the students and remained as a teacher until June 1884. As Tombstone’s population exploded so did it’s student body and Tombstone’s students were in dire need of their own schoolhouse. On January 15, 1883, a bill was proposed and passed by the Arizona School Superintendent, W.B. Horton. Tombstone’s second wooden schoolhouse was two stories high and built by H.G. Howe in 1883. The building was torn down after sixty-four years in 1947. The wood for the construction was logged from the forests in the Chiricahua mountains. Students received lessons in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and U.S. history. Their lessons began at nine in the morning and one in the afternoon and were instructed to be polite, attentive, orderly, and to come to class clean and free from contagious disease. One of the more shocking incidents to take place was the Earp-Clanton gunfight. Hearing the commotion, despite the warnings from their teachers, students flooded out into the street and saw the dead men left from the shootout. After M.M. Sherman left for ranching, Sarah I. Herring took over as Tombstone’s principal until February 1, 1886 when the school was at risk of closure due to lack of funding. The school remained open, but the number of teachers was reduced to five and then later to four. George A. Metcalf was brought in for the next principal and he filled that role from September 1886 to June 1889 and again for another three years from 1891 to 1893. Metcalf was a disciplinarian with a temper who had no problem with using corporal punishment against unruly students. John A. Rockfellow from New York was principle from 1889 to 1890 and was far less quick to discipline then Metcalf. Rockfellow loved teaching the students math and American history. Another of Tombstone’s early principals was Thomas E. Dalton who previously worked for three years as a principal at the Phoenix High School. In 1890, he came to Tombstone for a ten-month contract receiving $125 a month for a salary, or about $3,800 in 2021. After Metcalf’s second stint as Tombstone’s principal he left for a cattle ranch in Kansas. He was then hired by Colonel Greene to work in Sonora at the Cananea Copper Company. There he was killed alongside his brother William Metcalf during a workers strike in June 1906. The old wooden schoolhouse was replaced by the Tombstone Union High School in 1922. It was designed in a Mission Revival style by Gustavus Trost from Trost & Trost in El Paso and built by the Sparks Brothers Construction company from Tucson. A gymnasium was later built in 1951. This building served the community until 2006. The building was offered for sale the following year and was finally sold in 2022.

1981.194.27