#THE CAVE BAR AND GRILL ANDERSON MO FULL#

“ Never happened.” Richardson was a prolific author of Western stories which he penned under a variety of pseudonyms and it’s all too likely that his ability for conjuring up stories spilled over into his so-called narrative of Canyon Diablo. “ Nearly everything you’ve read is fiction,” says George Shaw, an archivist at the Arizona State Railroad Museum. In a time where very few documents existed – there is, for example, no record of a Canyon Diablo newspaper in the railroad camp – Richardson somehow magically managed to not only know how many saloons and brothels there were in the town, but was able to name them, too. It was virtually all the imagination of Gladwell Richardson. There’s only one problem with this picture of Canyon Diablo: It never existed. It was a place that made Tombstone seem like the most sedentary of suburbs. Six town marshals died in quick succession, the first lasting just four hours, the longest serving surviving a month. It was said to be a lawless and dangerous place with a Boot Hill cemetery which was filled within a year with those who had suffered a violent demise. Originally a railroad camp, Canyon Diablo had a main street called Hell Street, fourteen saloons, ten gambling houses, four brothels and two dance halls, many of which stayed open twenty-four hours a day. For years, people have spoken in awe of Canyon Diablo, a town on the edge of the canyon from which it took its name and a mile or so from Two Guns. Thanks to the work of Marshall Trimble, Arizona’s state historian, one Richardson tale has already been debunked. Perhaps the most compelling evidence towards the story of the Apache Death Cave being an exaggerated and embroidered (if not invented) story is that the facts emanate from one source Gladwell Grady Richardson.

#THE CAVE BAR AND GRILL ANDERSON MO FULL#

Had Miller believed – or even known – of the existence of the Death Cave story would he have turned the cave into first a tacky tourist attraction and secondly a dance hall? And even if he had been prepared to compromise his claimed heritage, would Chief Joe, a full blood Hopi, have gone along with the plan?Ī later postcard, also with no mention of any death caves. It would be forty feet by fifteen feet and for the use and entertainment of not only tourists but local Winslow residents. In late 1926, he and his friend and fellow trader Joe Secakuku announced a plan to build a dance floor in the cave, although this never came to pass. Many accounts accuse Miller of clearing out the caves and selling Apache skulls but there is one fact which goes against this idea Miller claimed to have Apache blood (whether full blood or half blood depends on which account you read) and while that claim is perhaps a little tenuous, as such he would have been unlikely to sell the bones of his ancestors. Note no mention of death.Īll photographs that exist of Two Guns during Miller’s tenure show the attraction advertised as the APACHE CAVES or the MYSTERY CAVE. A postcard of the Apache caves from the 1930s.

The cave bar and grill anderson mo