The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26, 1881, or 143 years ago. But if you go to Tombstone, Arizona today, you can see that the entire town is dedicated to attracting tourism dollars off this long-ago showdown between the Earps, Clantons and McLaurys. They have daily reenactments “in The Streets of Tombstone Theater.” You can hear “actor Vincent Price narrate an exciting multimedia history of Tombstone from Geronimo’s Apaches to modern times.” A visitor can “Walk through the O.K. Corral stables as they appeared in the 1880s. Admire our 1880’s blacksmith shop. Sit in our buggies. Pan for gemstones in our running water mining sluice.”
I don’t blame the locals. There’s only 1,300 of them and it’s a bit of a wonder that Tombstone didn’t become a ghost town after the mining industry collapsed in 1886. The famous gunfight is the only thing they have going for them.
I can’t say the same for Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler County is “one of just two counties in Western Pennsylvania where the population is growing.” But Jennifer Ford, the executive director of the county’s historical society, says of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump that “Unfortunately, it will go down in history as the most notable event that ever took place in Butler.”
And, already, if you pay a visit, you’ll be treated to a 400-pound sculpture of Donald Trump raising his fist in the air capturing the moment when he rose bloodied from the ground and yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“The statue and ‘fight, fight, fight’ resonates with everybody,” said Bob Oesterling, a local businessman and Trump supporter. “Everyone knows you got to ‘fight, fight, fight’ or we are done as the United States of America.”
Walking around town, you’ll notice that “the word ‘fight’ has been graffitied on streets and utility boxes.” And, yes, there’s already a store for souvenir shoppers:
“People that come in are very afraid and very angry,” said Barbara Davidson, a manager for United Republicans of Butler County, which runs a store that sells T-shirts and trinkets depicting the moment after Trump was shot. “They are angry not only about the assassination attempt. They are angry about the direction the country is going on.”
Doing some math, 143 years from now will be the year 2167, and I have no idea if Butler, Pennsylvania will be thriving then. But if civilization hasn’t completely collapsed, I can almost guarantee you that there will be a tourism industry based on the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. It might be the only work in town.
Meanwhile, here in the eastern half of the Keystone State, the assassination attempt is a quickly vanishing memory of much less interest than the upcoming debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
