Friends and Colleagues, I hope you are enjoying my weekly emails to help you get prepared and excited for your trip this summer to Phoenix and the CLDA Final Mile Forum and Expo. This week I am writing about Wyatt Earp, who I consider the most famous Arizona gunslinger. When I grew up, many moons ago, Arizona History was a required subject for 8th grade graduation. I remember reading about and idolizing Wyatt Earp and his brothers. A quick google search shows that there have been 10 movies about Wyatt Earp, courtesy of IMDb.com. I personally think that Tombstone is by far the best and it would be a great download to watch on your flight to Arizona.
Exploring the Life of Famed Gunslinger Wyatt Earp
Stories of gunslingers and frontier lawmen will never lose their appeal. Growing up in Arizona, I became fascinated by Arizona’s rich local history. I especially loved the stories of Wyatt Earp, famed gunslinger and lawman who survived the deadly shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. If you’re planning on visiting Tombstone when you join the CLDA for their Final Mile Forum and Expo in Phoenix, knowing a bit of the background history will enrich your trip or inspire you to head out to some of our other small but famous old western towns. Tombstone should definitely be on your list if you enjoy that sort of experience.
Wyatt Earp’s Early Life
The man who would become famous in the Southwest was actually born in Illinois in 1848. As a young lad, Earp repeatedly ran off from home to try to join the Union Army, to no avail. He got a taste of a lawman’s life early on. When his father, the local constable resigned, Earp got the job. After his first wife, Urilla Sutherland, died of typhoid, Earp grew despondent and pulled up stakes to move around the Indian Territory. He eventually settled in Dodge City, where he met another famous gunslinger Doc Holliday and joined the city’s police force.
The Legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Earp’s brother, Virgil, and other members of the Earp family flocked to Tombstone, AZ to take advantage of the silver rush. Earp joined his family there in 1879, and the two brothers began working in law enforcement. In 1881, Earp and his brother were chasing down a group of cowboys that had robbed a stagecoach. Earp struck a deal with a local rancher, Ike Clanton, who knew the cowboys. But Clanton turned on the Earp brothers, and the feud led to the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
There are various stories surrounding the exact facts of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. What we do know is that Doc Holliday joined the Earp brothers as they made their way to the O.K. Corral to face off against the Clanton gang, technically the fight took place in the alley behind the O.K. Corral. I guess even back then they thought about the marketing implications and thought that the “Gunfight in the alley behind the O.K. Corral” did not quite have the right ring to it.
It is not really known who fired the first shot, but it is claimed that Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton made the mistake of cocking their pistols when approached by the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. Doc’s bullet was the first to hit home, tearing through Frank McLaury’s belly and, as the legend goes, sending McLaury’s own shot wild through Wyatt’s coat-tail. The 30-second shootout left Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Tom McLaury dead. Virgil Earp took a shot to the leg and Morgan suffered a shoulder wound.
Sheriff John Behan arrested Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp, as well as Doc Holliday for the murder of Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury. However, Judge Wells Spicer, who was related to the Earps, decided that the defendants had been justified in their actions. In late December 1881, the Clantons and McLaurys launched their vendetta with a shotgun ambush of Virgil Earp; he survived, but lost the use of his left arm. Three months later, Wyatt and Morgan were playing billiards when two shots were fired from an unknown source. Morgan was fatally wounded.
As a U.S. deputy marshal, Wyatt had a legal right and obligation to bring Morgan’s killers to justice, but he quickly proved to be more interested in avenging his brother’s death than in enforcing the law. Three days after Morgan’s murder, Frank Stillwell, one of the suspects in the murder, was found dead in a Tucson, Arizona, rail yard. Wyatt and his close friend Doc Holliday were accused—accurately, as later accounts revealed—of murdering Stillwell. Wyatt refused to submit to arrest, and instead fled Arizona with Holliday and several other allies, pausing long enough to stop and kill another man named Florentino Cruz, who he believed had been involved in Morgan’s death.
In the years to come, Wyatt wandered throughout the West, speculating in gold mines in Idaho, running a saloon in San Francisco, and even raising thoroughbred horses in San Diego. At the turn of the century, the footloose gunslinger joined the Alaskan gold rush, and ran a saloon in Nome, Alaska until 1901. After participating in the last of the great gold rushes in Nevada, Wyatt finally settled in Los Angeles, where he tried unsuccessfully to find someone to publicize his many western adventures. Wyatt’s famous role in the shootout at the O.K. Corral did attract the admiring attention of the city’s thriving new film industry. For several years, Wyatt became an unpaid technical consultant on Hollywood Westerns, drawing on his colorful past. Wyatt died unceremoniously in 1929. Ironically, the fame that eluded Wyatt in life came soon after he died. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall, a wildly fanciful biography that portrayed the gunman as a brave and virtuous instrument of frontier justice was published and dozens of similarly laudatory books and movies followed, ensuring Wyatt Earp an enduring place in the popular American mythology of the Wild West.
There’s no question that Arizona has a rich and colorful history, another reason why I’m proud to call it my home.
