C.S. Fly's Boarding House

This building is a replica of the boarding house Camillus and Mollie Fly ran beside their photography studio.

The house stood at 312 Fremont Street, connected with the studio. From December 1879 the Flys photographed Tombstone from this property: its people, its streets, and the country around the town. The boarding house was a business as well as a home. Roomers helped pay the household, and they were company for Mollie when Camillus was away with the camera. She managed both the gallery and the house on those trips.

Inside, one side of the exhibit is photographs of Tombstone and the people who lived here, taken by the Flys. The other side is the set Camillus Fly made of Geronimo in 1886. That March, Fly and an assistant named Chase joined General George Crook and photographed Geronimo’s camp at Cañon de los Embudos, in the Sierra Madre, a short distance south of the border in Mexico. The meeting with Crook was not Geronimo’s final surrender. The pictures are still the only known photographs of American Indians taken while they were still at war with the United States. The Tombstone Epitaph reported on March 30, 1886, that Fly had photographed Geronimo. The house also shows Fly’s photographs of the 1887 earthquake at Bavispe, Sonora.

At the back is a replica of the room where Doc Holliday was staying at the time of the gunfight. John Henry Holliday, a dentist and gambler, sided with the Earps. He was living here with Mary Katherine Horony, called Big Nose Kate. The tour says the cowboys may have gathered in the vacant lot beside the house because Doc was living in it. Kate, Camillus Fly, and Mollie Fly probably saw the fight from inside. None of the three was called to testify at the murder hearing that followed.

The fight was in the vacant lot beside this house, between Fly’s and the Harwood house, on the afternoon of October 26, 1881. The tour puts that lot at about 18 feet wide. It did not happen inside the O.K. Corral. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran into Fly’s house when the shooting started. After the firing stopped, the wounded Billy Clanton asked Camillus Fly for more cartridges, and Fly disarmed him. The thirty seconds in that lot are told on the history page. The cameras are in C.S. Fly’s Photography Studio.

This stop is marked on the O.K. Corral Guide Map. The other stops are listed on the Exhibits page.