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Joyce Aros
Joyce Aros came to Tombstone several times as a teenager back in the 1950's. Much of Allen street was boarded up and Boothill was a windswept and neglected old cemetery; no fence, ...view moreJoyce Aros came to Tombstone several times as a teenager back in the 1950's. Much of Allen street was boarded up and Boothill was a windswept and neglected old cemetery; no fence, no buildings, and few graves still marked with rusty pipes that had worn and dried up pieces of wood wired to them. But it haunted anyone who saw it and beckoned them to return and seek out the stories that were buried there.
Back in Canada, Joyce read everything she could about Tombstone and it's fascinating people. Not only the Earps and Doc Holliday, but so many more. But it soon became apparent that much of it was fiction. The Earp brothers were too good to be true and the cowboys were shadowy figures with no identity.
Years later, after relocating to Tucson, Arizona, Joyce married a working cowboy, one of the last of the old time Vaqueros in the area, and got to know a lot of people who still lived a frontier type life. These people were still pioneering in so many ways and still adhered to the old way of living with the land.
Joyce's interest in the characters of the Cochise county exploits was set aside for a few years to raise seven children. But once that was done, it was time to seriously look into the history and find out who really were these men and women of a long time ago.
Not surprisingly, they turned out to be far more interesting than even she imagined. The results were several series of articles in defense of the ranchers and cowboys of Cochise county, and a continuing search for the true account of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, as it has been referred to.view less