Bird Cage Theatre

If Schieffelin Hall was Tombstone's respectable stage, the Bird Cage was its notorious one. Billy and Lottie Hutchinson opened it in December 1881 meaning to run a family theatre, but a boomtown of unmarried miners wanted a saloon, gambling hall, and brothel, and the Bird Cage obliged, its name taken from the curtained cribs overhead. In 1882 the New York Times called it "the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast." It ran nonstop until the mines flooded in 1889, then sat sealed until 1934, reopening as the near-intact museum it remains.

What the plaque says

Bird Cage Theatre. This structure has been recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey of the United States Department of the Interior for its archives at the Library of Congress.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tombstone — steps away
  The silver strike named for a death that never came
• Bisbee — 21 mi
  Queen of the Copper Camps — and the deportation it tried to forget

More markers nearby

• "Buckskin" Frank Leslie & Luke Short — steps away
• Home & Office of Wm. Herring — steps away
• Brown's Hotel and Hafford's Saloon — steps away
• Schieffelin Hall — steps away