Campo, the Forgotten Gunfight by Bryon Harrington (www.CampoGunfight.com, 2009 Campo, 372 pp.)
 

Review by Miriam Raftery
 

July 3, 2011 (Campo) –Few San Diegans are aware that a Wild West shoot-out deadlier than the famed O.K. Corral confrontation occurred in our own East County.

A patron in a Tecate cantina overheard a notorious group of banditos boast of plans to rob the entire town of Campo, a frontier settlement near the Mexican border. So he rode north and tipped off the Gaskill brothers, owners of the Campo Store. The brothers asked San Diego’s Sheriff to send a posse for protection—to no avail. Left to fend for themselves with their lives on the line, the townspeople planned a defense. Then they mounted a vigil that lasted for weeks, until the fateful showdown on December 4, 1875.