Dodge City had been a frontier cowtown for several years, but by 1879 it had begun to settle down. Virgil Earp was the town constable in Prescott, Arizona Territory, and he wrote to Wyatt about the opportunities in the silver-mining boomtown of Tombstone. He later wrote, "In 1879, Dodge was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of reckless blood, and I decided to move to Tombstone, which was just building up a reputation."