The Lost Grave of Mattie Earp

The name Celia Ann Blaylock probably doesn’t ring a bell. In fact, there was a concerted effort to supress that name out of the wild west’s history. Who is she?

She was a farmer’s daughter, a sister, a runaway, a seamstress, an addict, and a soiled dove of the west. She was Celia Ann “Mattie Earp” Baylock and she was one of Wyatt Earp’s common-law wives.

If you’ve seen the movie Tombstone, you know her story was not a happy one. The film featured her as an emotional woman in a constant state of stupor, who gets packed off to California while Wyatt Earp goes on a vendetta ride… before he dances into the night with a different woman. 🙄 But how much of the film is actually true? History is written by the victors and Wyatt Earp outlived her by 41 years. Plenty of time to wipe her out of his story (and at some point even threatening litigation against his biographers).

Here is what we do know about Celia Ann Blaylock, latter Mattie Earp.

• She was born in 1850 in Iowa to very stern parents. When she was around 16-18 years old, she and her younger sister ran away to avoid farming life.
• She found work as a seamstress but… clearly that wasn’t as lucrative as prostitution.
• Court documents show her venture into prostitution began in 1872. Sometime around then, Wyatt Earp came into her life. This isn’t ‘Pretty Woman’ though. Mattie continued work as prostitute during their early years together.
• She had a laudanum addiction, before Wyatt Earp left her, due to dental disintegration.
• In 1880, she was listed as Wyatt’s common-law wife in Tombstone, Arizona.
• She accompanied Wyatt’s family to California after the gunfight of O.K. Corral. He never came for her, having abandoned her for Josephine Marcus.
• She went back to prostitution in Globe, Arizona before moving on to Pinal Arizona.
• She died in squalor in 1888 of a laudanum and alcohol overdose.
• She is buried in an unmarked grave in the Historic Pinal Cemetary.

We continued our exploration of the area near Superior and stopped by Picket Post Antiques where we chit chatted about how to find Mattie Earp’s forgotten gravesite… and picked up a tea hat. 🙂

Directions
The dirt trail to the Historic Pinal Cemetery is at 33° 17′ 5.68″N, 111° 7′ 27.32″W.

1. Just off of Highway 60, take the Silver King Mine Road (across the Superior Municipal Airport) and head north.
2. Continue pass the Perlite Mine on the left and proceed to a fork in the road about .6 miles in. Veer left onto E Happy Camp Road.
3. About .4 miles in, E Happy Camp Road splits into another fork right before the Silver King Wash. Turn left instead of continuing onto E Happy Campy Road. This is easy to miss. We did a lot of backtracking off road to find this. 😛
4. From there, follow the route for another .8 miles. The cemetery lies at the end of the trail.

This is just a marker. Celia Blaylock / Mattie Earp’s actual grave is unmarked.

After exploring the Historic Pinal Cemetery, we headed back south to Tucson and stopped by the Tom Mix memorial. Tom Mix was an actor who appeared in almost 300 silent films (mostly Westerns). He died at the age of 60 on Arizona State Route 79 when his car overturned, causing one of his large suitcases in the back of the car to hurtle forward and break his neck.

We went home and watched one of Tom Mix’s silent films. He was a Hollywood pioneer in the genre of Westerns.