FAQ for
Back to the Future Part III (1990) More at IMDbPro »

This should cover EVERYTHING in the F.A.Q about Clara, the tombstone and the ravine in one go (hopefully).

Right, the main thing to keep in mind is the fact there are 3 timelines to remember here.

The are 3 timelines are...

1, The original timeline with NO Marty or Doc in 1885.

Clara turns up at the station. There is no one to meet her. She hires a buckboard and heads into town. Horse gets spooked by a snake and Clara falls into the ravine. The ravine is named "Clayton Ravine" out of respect. This is the timeline Marty & Doc know of as they were from a future AFTER these events.

2, The first alt timeline with only Doc in 1885.

Doc gets asked by the mayor to meet Clara from the station (we know this due to BttF III), He does meet Clara, they fall in love. Doc gets shot in the back by Buford and dies. Clara lives on in this timeline and erects the tombstone and has inscribed on it "Erected in eternal memory by his beloved Clara"; this is the tombstone Marty finds in 1955 and takes a photo of. That tombstone would not exist in 1955 until the very second Doc gets sent to 1885, which is why it was not seen before...I'll get to what the ravine is called later as there are various possiblities.

3, The second alternate timeline with Marty AND Doc in 1885, and the one we see in BttF III.

This timeline is a mix of the first two. Doc gets asked to meet Clara and he agrees. Except this time Marty turns up and he forgets about meeting her. So Clara hires a buckboard and heads into town. Snake, ravine...but this time Doc is there to "save" her. They fall in love...yada, yada..."Eastwood Ravine".

Now for the ravine's name in the 2nd timeline.

Possiblity 1.

When Marty tells the story of "Clayton Ravine", he is talking from his memories from BEFORE Doc gets sent to 1885 and BEFORE Doc saves Clara. So from Marty's point of view, it would still have been called "Clayton Ravine", even if it was not after Doc saved Clara. But Marty would not know this as he came from the "original" timeline where it was still called "Clayton Ravine". The only way Marty would know what the ravine was called AFTER Doc saved Clara would be to time travel to a point AFTER these events but before the train crash at the end of the film...but he does not, so he keeps his original memory of the ravine. What the ravine is called in 1885 from that point (but before "Eastwood")...maybe it remained "Shonash Ravine"? But whatever it was called is irrelevant, as Marty would only remember it being called "Clayton Ravine" anyway.

Possiblity 2.

Theory only. Clara (after Doc dies) throws herself into the ravine through depression after losing her true love. The townfolk call the ravine "Clayton Ravine" as they feel sorry for Clara. So even in the 2nd timeline, it's possible for the ravine to have still been called "Clayton Ravine".

That should clear up any questions about Clara, the ravine or the tombstone.

Doc drained the DeLorean's fuel tank before burying it, in order to prevent the fuel from corrupting the machine over the 70 years it would be buried there. Also, gas is flammable, and could have resulted in the DeLorean exploding. Before Marty left 1955, Doc mentioned how he had just refilled the car with gas - confirming that it had been buried wihout any.

They could not have taken parts from the DeLorean either, because it would mean that those parts would be missing when Marty and Doc found it in 1955. The time machine had been made in the 80s, and many of its parts would probably not be available in 1955, resulting in the time machine being unable to bring Marty back to 1885 in the first place.

Doc had obviously found another way to make the train work ("It runs on steam!"), not necessarily via the flux capacitor. In the many years he spent in the past, he could have had time to invent an alternative way to do it. Alternatively, Doc could have just created a basic time machine, gone to the future, and then used future technology to modify it and make it into what we saw at the end of Part 3. (which he clearly did, in order to have a Hover-Conversion done at the very least: Marty- "Where you goin' now Doc, the future?" Doc- "Already been there.")

The DeLorean was only a "prototype". The train was powered very differently. So Doc could have developed a new way to make time travel possible vastly different to how the DeLorean worked.

Don't forget he also had the hover board, He could of easly used that technology to help forge the hovering train.

The BTTF writers said that this was just due to McFly men being attracted to the same kind of women: in fact, it has been observed by scientists that men often marry women who resemble their mothers, and women marry men who resemble their fathers. One example of this is Jennifer resembling young Lorraine somewhat.

They also said they did not think it would be right to not give Lea Thompson a role in the movie. So it was added to also give Lea a bigger role than if she wasn't the wife.

Marty: "where are you going Doc, back to the future?"

Doc: "No, already been there."

So Doc does not go to the future, he clearly does not stay in the present. That only leaves 1 option. Judging by Doc's letter he sent to Marty at the end of BttF II. Doc was more than happy living in 1885. Keeping in mind, he wrote this letter BEFORE meeting Clara. So it stands to reason he would go back to where he was most happy and live with Clara and now his kids.

But I doubt Doc goes back to live in 1885 going by the age of his kids. Proabably more like 1895-ish.

Or he could have just traveled through history for the hell of it. Why else would he modify the time machine so thoroughly?

There are a couple of factors to base a timeline on:

1) According to the BTTF Wiki, Doc and Clara married on December 15 (about 14 weeks after Marty's departure). Their son Jules was born sometime in 1886 and Verne in 1888. When they appear in 1985, they look to be about 9-10 and 7-8, respectively.

2)The locomotive used, the Sierra No. 3, was first manufactured in 1896.

This would suggest approximately 11 years had passed between the events of Sept. 7, 1885 and the Brown family finding Marty in 1985. Assuming Doc would troubleshoot the technology in his workshop and then choose the very newest engine model of the day to create the finished time machine, this timeline holds plausibility.

Not necessarily. For example, early in the film, Marty took a photograph of Doc's tombstone as it appeared in Doc's original 1885 storyline. After Marty goes back in time to help him, the tombstone does not disappear, but the writing fades away. This suggests that the future is not "set in stone" (pun intended), but is still unresolved. It is not until that particular tombstone is destroyed when Marty defeats Tannen that it vanishes from the polaroid.

In much the same way, some parts of the future will likely not change: the company that Marty worked for in the original 2015 will still exist, and he may still work for them -- and on a cellular level, that piece of paper will still be manufactured. Unless Marty and Jennifer make further changes in their life to separate them from the original 2015 timeline, the fax will still exist.

This could be deduced simply by looking up lot maps from the period. Historians, archaeologists and metal detectorists use them to plot where houses used to be in order to find good places to search for artifacts. It is presumable that Doc would have studied these maps to find an open, out-of-the-way spot to send Marty back, in order to avoid both possible collisions (like in the first film) and being seen. He could have done this while they were looking for information on Doc (when they find both pictures of Marty's family and Doc by the clock) or at a later point before, or even after, he completed the repairs to the DeLorean, which would take at least a couple of days anyway, even if Doc had all of the parts he needed for this task (as well as the tires, break fluid, power-steering fluid, transmission fluid, and motor oil), some of which would be hard, or outright impossible, to obtain in 1955, since the vehicle was manufactured in the 1980s. And as far as trees go -- it's the desert.