Third Street — George Daves Legend Site
Third Street — George Daves Legend Site is a legend street in Tombstone, Arizona. Street associated with an alleged frontier-era apparition. Local lore holds that Arizona Office of Tourism recounts George Daves’s apparition lingers around Third Street, tied by the tour narrative to an 1888 shooting.
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Is Third Street — George Daves Legend Site haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend, 1 named entity — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed documented legend. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
Tombstone has no shortage of famous gunfire, but the shooting on Third Street in April 1888 is the one the ghost tours keep. George Daves was a boarder at the Buford House, an adobe raised in 1880 by mining executive George Washington Buford — one of the few two-story homes in early Tombstone — and by the tour narrative the street outside is where his ghost still walks.
April 13, 1888
The story as it is told: Daves had courted a young woman named Cleopatra "Petra" Edmunds, then left town for the silver mines — nine months, in one version — to save enough money to ask for her hand. He came back to find her walking arm in arm with another man. On April 13, seeing her in the street again, he ran to the Buford House for his pistol, chased her down on Third Street, and fired four times. Convinced he had killed the only woman he loved, he put the gun to his temple and finished it there.
The record's cruelest detail is that he was wrong. Petra Edmunds survived — wounded, by most accounts twice — and was attended by Dr. George Goodfellow, the same frontier surgeon who patched most of Tombstone's famous gunshot patients. She lived, married a man named Louis Lombardi two years later, and had her wedding portrait taken at Fly's Studio. Daves got the grave he assumed he had given her.
What lingers
Arizona's own tourism materials recount Daves's apparition lingering around Third Street and the Buford House — the man who killed himself over a murder that did not happen, still pacing the ground where the mistake was made. The file keeps it as a documented legend attached to a documented crime: the shooting and suicide are the record; the footsteps on Third Street are the report.
The record of claims
Arizona Office of Tourism recounts George Daves’s apparition lingers around Third Street, tied by the tour narrative to an 1888 shooting. Third Street — George Daves Legend Site in Tombstone, Arizona carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. 'Ghost Tours of Arizona' carries the account. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.
Arizona Office of Tourism recounts George Daves’s apparition lingers around Third Street, tied by the tour narrative to an 1888 shooting. The reports at Third Street — George Daves Legend Site are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. As folklore it's unkillable: the story is too good, and the place too fitting, to let go.
Alleged entities
Arizona Office of Tourism recounts George Daves’s apparition lingers around Third Street, tied by the tour narrative to an 1888 shooting. The reports at Third Street — George Daves Legend Site are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. 'Ghost Tours of Arizona' carries the account. A named spirit outlasts an anonymous one; the file's name is George Daves.
Sources on file
- 01Ghost Tours of ArizonaArizona Office of Tourism · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Broad street-level legend location; no precise haunting address or coordinates claimed. Shooting backstory and claimed identity remain unverified rather than merged into historic persons.