After more than half a century of service, a favorite local breakfast diner is closing its doors.

While it may be easy to blame hard times on the recession,  Cathy Fisher, owner of Top O’ the Hill restaurant on Highway 80, has her eyes fixed on a further horizon. Fisher watched Tombstone change from behind the counter of the once bustling restaurant. She doesn’t have a favorable outlook on the town’s future.

According to Fisher, an unending dispute over a solicitation ordinance coupled with an influx of new businesses have robbed her of customers and led to the unraveling of the town’s vital tourism trade.

“It’s the wrong kind of fighting,” Fisher said. “Everybody is arguing and restaurants are fighting each other. Meanwhile there aren’t any gunfights in the streets. They’re killing the town. Tourists have dropped off, way off.”

Originally made law two decades ago, the solicitation ordinance was intended to prevent merchants from handing out fliers and using underhanded tactics to snag customers away from competing businesses. However, the law was not rigidly enforced until recently when Mayor Dusty Escapule refined the ordinance to corral the solicitation of businesses located off Allen Street to two street corners on the strip. The law bound Allen Street businesses to advertising only on their own part of the boardwalk.

The enforcement of the law did not fall on deaf ears; objections were raised and a heated fight between Six Gun City owner Mike Carrafa and the City Council spilled into a string of infighting between business owners.

“Nobody wants to give,” Fisher said. “It has to be their way. That’s just not going to work. They have to meet in the middle somewhere.”

Four years ago, business was booming at the Top O’ the Hill. On a typical weekend, both dining rooms at the restaurant were brimming with guests. But for the past year, the only patrons Fisher could count on were a handful of locals.

A smoking ban killed the restaurant’s evening business, forcing Fisher to retool her menu to serve only breakfast and lunch. The town’s diminished tourism coupled with the financial woes of the recession caused the most consternation for Fisher. As if things weren’t bad enough, newly opened restaurants threatened to further rob her of customers, Fisher said.

“The recession was starting and all these restaurants just opened up,” she said. “How many pizza joints do you need in one town?

“I guess they figure, the more the licenses the more money. Well, there are still going to be just as many people in town.”

According to City Hall, a business license costs $30 for the first year and $150 fee is imposed each subsequent year for renewal. The city said only one new restaurant, the Tombstone Sandwich Shoppe, applied for a license and opened in the last year. Like the town’s many failed restaurants, Morgan’s Cafe, which opened about three years ago as Morgan’s Pizza, has struggled to remain open and has changed ownership several times. According to the city, a change in ownership necessitates a new license.

O’Neill Yakush, a former regular at Top O’ the Hill and a longtime Tombstone resident, shares a similar outlook as Fisher on the town’s attitudes towards business and tourism.

“They depend on a few events a year,” Yakush said. “It’s like feast or famine. Living in the desert, you get a deluge, and then for months you get no rain. A lot of these people have the mindset that they can wait for a major event to happen and they’ll make so much money that they’ll be able to get along until the next one.”

With weak returns from events like Helldorado Days and a dry spell of tourism, Yakush said the town is already in the midst of a financial drought that won’t be quenched anytime soon.

“There are only three reasons any tourists ever come to here,” he said. “They want to see gunfights in the streets; cowboys, horses and stagecoaches; and they want to see the historical sites.”

While the debate over the solicitation ordinance rages on, Yakush said if the elements that attract tourists aren’t restored, people are likely to abandon Tombstone for similar destinations like Old Tucson.

Currently, the Vigilantes are the only performers allowed to hold gunfights on the streets; they perform once a week on Vigilante Sunday. Six Gun City and the O.K. Corral also hold gunfights at their respective properties because they lack the permits required for street performances. Yakush, who is a former Allen Street performer, said much of the acting is not historically accurate.

Fisher agreed that people are aware of the changes and said many are economizing or not coming at all because they don’t want to pay to see shows that were once free on Allen Street.

“People are getting smart,” Fisher said.

“They’re taking ice chests and feeding their kids because prices are high.”

“During Helldorado they tried to charge me an extra dollar for a drink,” she added. “It’s like you’re getting all these extra people in here, why are you raising your prices?”

Gloria Goldstein of the Longhorn Restaurant said business is tough, but being in the downtown area helps.

“I hate to see anybody going out of business,” she said. “Everybody works so hard to make things work.

“It’s a small town and the economy isn’t good, so it’s a lot more difficult to do business right now.”

Fisher said now that she closed the doors at Top O’ the Hill, she’ll likely get a job waiting tables in Sierra Vista.

“I’ve worked at Pizza Hut, at a truck stop in Eloy, Denny’s, J.B.’s,” Fisher said. “I’ve been waiting tables for 22 years and I’m going to keep on doing it.

“I’ll miss certain customers, and my friends that are in here that are invisible,” Fisher joked. “You get shadows in her and stuff… hear your name called out every once in a while. There are old timers that you’ll miss. Some of them died and you still miss them.”