30 seconds is all it took for a gunfight to transcend into a legend. On October 26, 1881, Virgil Earp, Tombstones Town Marshall, decided to confront cowboys Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton, Billy Claiborne, Wes Fuller, and Ike Clanton, who had been flouting the local gun ordinance. Virgil's brothers, Wyatt and Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday acted as backup. As Virgil approached he announced his presence and his intent to disarm the cowboys. The cowboys responded by drawing and cocking their guns. From there the story varies, according to witness accounts. What we do know, is that Wyatt Earp was the one left standing, completely unharmed.
https://crimereads.com/how-wyatt-earp-went-from-lawman-to-legend/
"The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous
Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of
Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, nine men
clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American
frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds,
killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from
a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the backcountry of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt
ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to
thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly
agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cowboys, began to kill each
other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over
with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne
confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly
deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday.
Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding
the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and
violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta
ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and
Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly
Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his
brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp
complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's
last boom town"-- Provided by publisher.
A complete history of the life of Wyatt Earp, which is derived from the
accounts of his contemporaries, and includes a consideration of the
Hollywood legend which grew around the stories of his exploits.
Chronicles the career of Doc Holliday in an attempt to learn the truth
about the Southern dentist-turned Western adventurer whose association
with Wyatt Earp and other escapades in the frontier has inspired books,
songs, and legends.
Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West by Clavin, Thomas
"Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a
small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle
drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing
through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City's
streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick
with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s,
Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the
West. Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained
men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and
the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place
in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to
Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But
before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed,
returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore
order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off
into the sunset. The true story of their friendship, romances,
gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters
they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse
James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the
Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) has gone largely untold--lost in the haze
of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now"-- Provided by
publisher.
A revisionist history of the Old West battle challenges popular
depictions of such figures as the Earps and Doc Holliday, tracing the
influence of a love triangle, renegade Apaches, and the citizens of
Tombstone.
For nearly fifty years, she was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp: hero
of the O.K. Corral and the most famous lawman of the Old West. Yet
Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp has nearly been erased from Western lore. In
this fascinating biography, Ann Kirschner, author of the acclaimed
Sala's Gift, brings Josephine out of the shadows of history to tell her
tale: a spirited and colorful tale of ambition, adventure,
self-invention, and devotion. Reflective of America itself, her story
brings us from the post-Civil War years to World War II, and from New
York to the Arizona Territory to old Hollywood.
"It is 1862. With his older brothers fighting in the war, Wyatt Earp -
at fourteen - is left to manage the family's Iowa farm under his
father's iron rule. These years of labor inculcate into him an ambition
to seek his fortunes by his wits rather than the sweat of his back. The
open territory to the west, he knows, offers that opportunity. When his
family treks to California he makes the passing acquaintance of a
beguiling Mexican girl, whose philosophy of success and failure will
haunt Wyatt for years to come. It is the prophecy of the "adobe moon," a
rusty-hued orb that reminds a man: If you do not achieve your dreams,
you must settle for what you have. Though rejecting this creed, Wyatt
feels the notion dog him like a ghost. After stints as coach driver,
freight-hauler, and grader for the railroad, Wyatt takes his first
"respectable" job as constable in a small Missouri town. There he meets
the woman who teaches him the value of settling down with family. When
she dies with child, Wyatt sinks into a depression where the lines of
ethics blur. Wanted by the law he loses himself in the waterfront slums
of Peoria working in brothels. Fed up with his self-made squalor, he
returns to the West for a second chance at a proper life. In a Kansas
cattle town he comes face to face with his salvation . . . and his
destiny as a lawman with his own iron rule" -- Provided by publisher.
The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge
City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up
adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and
routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie
Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named
Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc
Holliday, the frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who has just opened an
office at No. 24, Dodge House.
A sequel to Doc is based on the true events of the gunfight at the O.K.
Corral and Wyatt Earp's survival against a backdrop of volatile politics
in 1881 America
A sequel to Doc is based on the true events of the gunfight at the O.K.
Corral and Wyatt Earp's survival against a backdrop of volatile politics
in 1881 America.
You Know My Name
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