The Epitaph keeps history alive in Tombstone : There have been changes, but Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper is still telling the stories of the West.

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. —  Back in 1880, a former Apache Indian agent named John Clum had a vision for this wild and lawless town. In a tent just off Allen Street he set up shop and, on a used hand press, cranked out the first edition of his newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph.

That edition carried ads for the daily stage line to Tucson (fare $7), a butcher who sold fresh sides of beef for 7 cents a pound and a machinist who repaired guns and sewing machines. It also listed the names of all residents for whom mail was waiting at the post office.

“Tombstone,” editorialized Clum of the silver-mining town whose population was closing in on 10,000, “is a city set upon a hill, promising to vie with ancient Rome, in a fame different in character but no less in importance.”

Clum’s hopes for Tombstone were never fulfilled. His wife, Mary, died in childbirth and was buried in the boot hill cemetery--among unruly men who had met their fate by gunfire or at the end of a hangman’s noose. And the town itself faded quickly after the mines ran out. By the Depression, it had become a semi-ghost town, with less than 400 residents.

But Clum did leave Tombstone and Cochise County one legacy--the Epitaph, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona. It hasn’t missed a publishing deadline in 115 years, and its loyal group of 8,000 subscribers--87% of whom said in a survey that they read the paper cover to cover--come from all 50 states and 24 countries. Despite the absence of national advertising, the paper turns a modest profit.

The Epitaph’s one-man editorial staff, 74-year-old publisher-editor Wallace Clayton, sat in his office recently, banging away with two fingers on an old Royal upright typewriter. He paused to light a cigarette and talk about the newspaper that until four years ago was set by Linotype.

“The Epitaph,” said Clayton, a former East Coast newspaperman and advertising executive, “is part of our Western heritage.”

Clum had given his newspaper its unusual name because, he said, “every tombstone needs an epitaph.” In those days, when one of the paper’s columns was titled “Death’s Doings,” Tombstone had 110 saloons, counted among its residents the three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and was so riotous that President Chester A. Arthur once threatened to impose martial law.

The name “Epitaph” was, then, not entirely inappropriate. And Clum--a savvy promoter--used to send copies to publishers around the country to call attention to his town and his paper.

The Epitaph covered the Oct. 21, 1881, gunfight at the O.K. Corral under the Page 1 headline: “YESTERDAY’S TRAGEDY: Three Men Hurled Into Eternity in the Duration of a Moment.”

With Clum rushing the Epitaph’s story onto the Western Union wire, the gunfight received wide coverage throughout the United States and became a part of Western mythology that lingers to this day.

Clayton, a self-taught historian of the Old West, scoffs at the fiction injected into the 64 books and more than two dozen movies that have dealt, in whole or part, with Wyatt Earp and Tombstone.

“Most Western history isn’t about history,” he said. “It’s about reinforcing the myth.” He recalled the 1950s TV series “Tombstone Territory,” which told viewers that its stories came “from the files of the Tombstone Epitaph.” Actually, the writers never got within 300 miles of Tombstone and made up the stories--although the Epitaph’s editor did get $100 a show for lending his paper’s name to the series.

When Clayton and two associates bought the Epitaph in 1974 for $70,000, the paper’s readership was both declining and becoming national. Its subscribers didn’t much care who spoke at the Tombstone Lion’s Club lunch, so Clayton changed the paper’s format into what it is today--a monthly journal devoted to original and thoroughly researched articles on Western history.

Its contributors--most of whom are members of the Western Writers of America--are not paid for their articles, but receive a stipend at year’s end if the Epitaph has made a profit.

With Tombstone (population 1,600) healthy again--350,000 people visit the town each year, and last winter’s tourist season was the best ever--Clayton, like Clum before him, sees a future for the town and the paper. But just to make sure, he is earmarking some profits for a perpetuation fund, so that the Epitaph can be self-sustaining after its investors--all three of whom already are of Social Security age--pass on.

Why does it matter if the paper survives in an era when so many newspapers have closed down in city after city? Clayton is shocked by the question. “Why, it has to keep publishing,” he said. “Simply has to. The Tombstone Epitaph is part of the living history of our West.”