Tumbleweed is a town in the Gaptooth Ridge region of Apache County, Arizona. It was named for the tumbleweeds which were occasionally blown through town, and it was originally a mining boomtown. It also came to have one of the largest African-American communities of the Wild West era. However, outlaws soon followed the miners in their pursuit of wealth, and Gaptooth Ridge became notorious for its outlawry during the 1890s. Sheriff Sam Freeman forcefully dispensed frontier justice as the town came to be threatened by the Del Lobo Gang, among others, but, after the railroad to Armadillo was built clean past Tumbleweed, the town's population gradually abandoned Tumbleweed for Armadillo. By 1911, Tumbleweed was a ghost town which was periodically occupied by outlaw gangs such as the Williamson Gang.
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