Death in Turkey Creek Canyon
On July 14, 1882, Johnny Ringo was found dead in the crotch of a large tree in West Turkey Creek Valley, near Chiricahua Peak, with a bullet hole in his right temple and an exit wound at the back of his head.
A single shot had been heard by a neighbor late in the evening the day before on July 13. The property owner found Ringo sitting on the low-leaning trunk and fork of a large tree by the river (a fallen trunk next to which Ringo is now buried). Ringo's revolver had one round expended and was found hanging by one finger in his hand. His feet were wrapped in pieces of his undershirt. His horse was found two weeks later, Ringo's boots tied to the saddle of his horse, a common method to keep scorpions out of boots. After an inquest, the coroner found that death had been caused by a single shot through the head, and Ringo's death was officially ruled a suicide.
Johnny Ringo is buried close to where his body was found in West Turkey Creek Canyon (31°51′49″N 109°20′16″W / 31.86361°N 109.33778°W / 31.86361; -109.33778) at the base of the tree in which he was found, which fell around 2010. The grave is located on private land and is accessible through a gate with instructions on how to get to the grave site.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Ringo
Famous quotes containing the words death, turkey, creek and/or canyon:
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)