About 60 miles from Willcox - birthplace of Rex Allen
and home of the Rex Allen Museum - between
9,795 foot Chiricahua Peak and Rio San Pedro
south of I-10 in Cochise County in the Sonoran Desert
 
the largest rosebush in the world grows in the courtyard
of the Rose Tree Museum in Tombstone, Arizona
just one block north of the historic court house
and within gunshot of the O.K. Corral.
 
In 1885 a young Scottish woman, Mary Gee,
bride of a mining engineer, was staying
at the Cochise House while her own home
was being built. Mary grew homesick
 
for her native Scotland and its green hills.
Her family, thinking it would cheer her
to have some part of her homeland with her,
shipped from far across the ocean
 
several plants and cuttings, including
her favorite Lady Banksia Rose.
Mary gave one of these rosebushes
to Amelia Adamson, the proprietress
 
who had befriended her. Together
they planted it in the back yard of the inn
where it quickly took root
and soon over-grew a nearby shed.
 
Today the trunk is over 12 feet in circumference.
Its branches, spreading over 8,000 square feet
and supported by an iron and post trellis,
are covered from mid-March thru April
 
with thousands of small white double roses.
Mary’s rosebush has bloomed
every Spring for 135 years.
And you can see it for five dollars.