This week in 1881, 140 years ago, lawmen Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, with Doc Holliday, fought it out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone with the the cattle-rustling "Cowboys," including the Clantons and the McLaurys.

Three men died and two were injured in the infamous gun battle, which has since been the subject of a multitude of movies, books, biographies, history lessons and televised series.

According to various accounts, the most famous shootout in the history of shootouts occured at 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, 1881.

There is some dispute about where the bullets flew: Was it the O.K. Corral, which fronted Allen Street and had a rear entrance on Fremont Street, or was it outside C.S. Fly's photo studio on Fremont Street?  Either way, there is agreement that it was fought, either entirely or in part, on Fremont Street, which today is State Route 80.  

"Historians have advanced various explanations as to the why of the misnamed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which was, properly speaking, a bloodletting on Fremont Street and an adjoining lot in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, on October 26, 1881," author Roger Jay said in an article on HistoryNet. 

Of course, Fremont street was a dirt road back then, and the combatants more than likely arrived on horseback for their date with destiny. It wasn’t until some 40 years later that US 80 entered Arizona along the path of what is now State Route 80, passing through Douglas, Bisbee, Tombstone and Benson, then over to Tucson. 

US 80 is often referred to as the "Mother of Arizona Highways" because its history generally aligns with the rising popularity of the automobile.

The 120-mile route was part of the coast-to-coast Bankhead Highway. It wound through southeastern Arizona to Tucson, north and west into Phoenix, over and down to Gila Bend and southwest to Yuma.

From there, the highway replaced a plank road across the sand dunes between Yuma and California's Imperial Valley, offering ways to either San Diego or Los Angeles.

SR 80 has received a lot of love in the form or improvement projects from ADOT. In 2015, while contemporary characters re-enacted the shootout daily in Tombstone, ADOT contractors were recreating the adobe bricks originally used for building in the late 1870s.

As part of that 2015 $1 million improvement project, crews also replaced the sidewalk in front of historic Schieffelin Hall, the former theater and ballroom built in 1881, and along both sides of Fremont Street, which is the local name of SR 80 in Tombstone.

ADOT narrowed the road and added lighting to improve pedestrian safety, and the appearance, of the “The Town too Tough to Die.”

At the time, Southeast District Engineer Bill Harmon said, “Tombstone is a national treasure and authentic features like Schieffelin Hall are becoming extremely rare. Tombstone is much more than a premise for ‘Old West’ movies. It behooves us to preserve and safeguard Schieffelin Hall for future generations.”

It might not look like much, but the Lowell Arch Bridge is a very important piece of Arizona's highway history.

In 1910, the Arizona Territorial Engineer's office completed the design and survey for the Bisbee-Douglas Highway, a 22.7-mile highway between ... well, the name says it all. This road was a vital link between the copper mines of Bisbee and the Phelps-Dodge smelter in Douglas. Indeed, it was the most expensive road project the Arizona Territorial Assembly had ever approved, costing nearly $78,000 at the time.

And the most important crossing on the highway was the Lowell Arch Bridge, a 60-foot-span, 16-foot-wide roadway over Mule Gulch, about six miles east of Bisbee. The contract for the bridge and that section of highway was awarded in October 1910 to the company R. Toohey and Sons out of Phoenix. The firm completed the work in December 1911, producing a bridge that featured more than 156 cubic yards of concrete, with an elliptical arch made from reinforced concrete abutments and guardrails.

In coming decades the Bisbee-Douglas Highway would become part of US 80, the important southern cross-country route that ran between Savannah, Georgia and San Diego. Though US 80 itself would be decommissioned in the late 1980s, this section still remains part of the state highway system as State Route 80.

The only alterations made to the Lowell Arch bridge since its original construction came in 1934, with the widening project on US 80. The work, completed for just under $36,000 widened the bridge considerably, as well as extending the abutments and wingwalls. Since then, the bridge continues to carry traffic on SR 80 with no further alterations.

The Lowell Arch Bridge not only played a very important role in Arizona's copper-mining industry, it was one of just two concrete arch bridges built by the Territorial Engineer (the other, in Tempe, is gone). And, unlike some other historical bridges we've featured on this blog, its still one that you can drive across today as part of a state highway.

If that isn't excuse enough to drive between Bisbee and Douglas, we don't know what is. 

Today, determining jurisdiction is pretty simple. ADOT oversees all state highways and freeways, with individual counties and municipalities taking care of the local infrastructure that falls inside their boundaries. But in the early days of transportation, such things were still being worked out.

And that brings us to the Leslie Creek Bridge. Located along Leslie Canyon Road in Cochise County roughly 17 miles north of State Route 80 near Douglas, this bridge is going on 93 years and is listed on our inventory of historic bridges in the county. 

The origins of this 70-foot bridge goes back to 1928, when the Cochise County Board of Supervisors approved its construction. Chosen to make the parts that would eventually become the Leslie Creek Bridge was the Virginia Bridge & Iron Company, which made bridges across the country during this time. For this particular location, a truss comprised of 10 equal-length panels, with verticals at the panel points, was made. These fabricated parts were then shipped to Arizona via rail in May 1928. Construction got going almost immediatley using prison labor, which wasn't that uncommon at the time. The bridge was done by the end of that summer and has been functioning since. It was also a fairly common design for the times. In fact, the Leslie Creek Bridge is one of eight in the inventory with virtually the same structure. 

That's all well and good, you might say, but this is an ADOT blog, so why are we talking about a county bridge nowhere near a state highway?

Because the Leslie Creek Bridge was built at an unusual time. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, local governments often took lead in establishing roads, bridges and other infrastructure. By the time the span over Leslie Creek was done, the Arizona Highway Department - the precursor to ADOT - had taken over the main responsibility for building bridges statewide. However, individual counties would still sometimes do smaller projects just as they always had. This particular bridge is one of the later examples of a county-built bridge, purchased in prefabricated parts from a national bridge company, and constructed by local crews.

And, hey, it seemed to work. Having a bridge just shy of a century is pretty impressive, no matter the size or where it's located!

The great thing about highways is they can take you nearly anywhere, including back in time.

Take State Route 80, for instance. This 120-plus-mile highway in southeastern Arizona swings you through some truly historic places such as Tombstone and Bisbee. The road itself has a fair bit of history to it, dating back to the 1920s and one of the first east-west transcontinental highways in the country. 

Then there's Erie Street in Lowell. If you turn off State Route 80 just before its junction with State Route 92 on the south end of Bisbee, you will feel like you have gone into some sort of time warp. 

With an aesthetic that can only be described as "vintage," the signage, storefronts, (non-functioning) gas pumps and a lot of the cars along this just-under-a-quarter-mile road date from 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s.

It's a carefully cultivated look this small community has crafted in recent years to ensure that Lowell stands out next to the equally colorful Bisbee.

According to the Bisbee Mining and History Museum, 19th century mine workers and their families established small clusters and communities to be close to their work in the era before cars. Lowell came from this tradition, with Erie Street being established as a business and social center near the Lowell and Hoasten Mines. Lowell was incorporated around the same time as Bisbee in the early 1900s and received an official post office in 1904. However, even then the "town" was Erie Street and two back alleyways, much as it is today.

The photo to the right is from the museum's archives and depicts what the street looked like in the 1930s.

In the age of automobiles, Erie Street even became part of old US 80, 

a transcontinental highway that developed off the older Bankhead Highway. The route is documented in 1927 by the nascent American Association of State Highway Officials (today the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO). US 80 traveled from Savannah, Georgia, to San Diego, running through eight states. In Arizona, it snaked its way between New Mexico and Yuma, hitting places such as Douglas, Benson, Tucson, Phoenix and, yes, Lowell.

While Lowell has always been a one-street town, most of the surrounding communities were eventually razed as the open-pit Lavender Mine went into operation in the mid-1950s, leaving Erie Street a lone throwback to an earlier time. The town's slogan, still to be seen on one of the signs, became "Just pass the pit!"

As times changed and the interstates came, stretches of US 80 began to be decommissioned starting in 1957. In the 1980s the final stretch in Arizona was renumbered as simply State Route 80. During all this, the road was shifted out of Lowell and Erie Street became a local road once again. However, Erie Street still connects to the state highway on its north and south ends.

But this did not mean the end of Lowell. In the last decade, the business owners on Erie Street and other enthusiastic individuals have banded together in what they call the "Lowell Americana Project" to use the once-bustling street as a kind of outdoor museum to showcase the distinctive flair of American design between the end of World War II and the early 1970s. 

Next time you feel nostalgic and like taking a drive, a trip to Lowell will help scratch both of those itches.

Wildfires are an ever-present danger in Arizona. When State Route 80, just outside Bisbee, was determined to be at high risk, ADOT partnered with other state and local agencies to get ahead of wildfire season to mitigate risk factors.

Wildfires have been a particular problem in Arizona in recent years, especially near populated areas. To reduce the risk of even greater wildfires, ADOT joined the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management with 20-person crews to begin chipping brush and broadcasting chips along SR 80 with the intention of reducing the natural fuels to wildfires during the hotter months of the year.

Bisbee Firewise, a community group dedicated to preserving the wildland-urban interface, sponsored the project, while ADOT provided traffic control around the working crews. However, while Bisbee Firewise oversaw the project, ADOT also stepped up to help coordinate communication efforts with the city of Bisbee, Cochise County and local media to ensure that local agencies and the public were informed about the nature of this project.

One challenge the group faced was the shape of the terrain. “The walls of the canyon are such that one side of the highway goes up steeply and the other goes down steeply,” explained ADOT Southeast District Engineer Bill Harmon. “That made it difficult to access and cut down trees. This is the first time people have gone in to remove trees and brush with the purpose of fire mitigation.”

Working in quarter-mile segments, the crews worked tirelessly, always keeping safety and community outreach top-of-mind.

“The risk of fire is now lower,” Harmon said. “It’s better for businesses and the community, but it also just looks nicer now.”

When it comes to dirt, the ADOT Blog has you covered.

We’ve shown you how we move it, we’ve told you the ways crews use it in construction, we’ve explained the tests that are performed on it and even why it sometimes gets “painted” green.

But today we’re talking about a project that takes dirt to a whole new level and utilizes it as a building material…

Right now, crews are working on a safety and enhancement project on SR 80 in the city of Tombstone. The project includes the restoration of some elements along the highway, known locally as Fremont Street, where it runs through the city’s historic district.

Part of the work includes the restoration of a porch on the city-owned Schieffelin Hall, a former theater and ballroom built in 1881.

Since Schieffelin Hall is an adobe structure, crews are using dirt to make new adobe bricks that’ll replace the water-damaged bricks at the base of the building.

ADOT projects don’t typically include this type of restoration and architectural work, but as ADOT Historic Preservation Specialist Sara Ferland explains in the video, Schieffelin Hall is unique.

“For federally funded projects, we have to identify historic properties within or adjacent to the right of way that might be impacted by the project. For restoration and rehabilitation you have to use matching historical materials whenever possible,” Ferland said.

More about the project
The restoration work is just a part of this $1.1 million improvement project. Crews will also replace the sidewalk in a three-block area in front of Schieffelin Hall, and along both sides of SR 80/Fremont Street. To make the street more pedestrian friendly, ADOT will narrow the width of the street and add lighting within the project area.

Work also includes

• constructing new concrete sidewalks and ADA-compliant ramps.
• installing new landscaping and an underground irrigation system between the new sidewalk and new curb on both sides of SR 80.
• removing the functionally obsolete pedestrian bridge, which is located at the east end of the project limits at the old Tombstone High School campus.
• narrowing the existing roadway from 68 feet wide to 44 feet wide by saw-cutting and partially removing the existing asphaltic concrete roadway.
• removing and replacing existing pavement in the project area.
• constructing new curbing and driveways.
• replacing, relocating or removing existing signs to maintain appropriate distance from the roadway.