Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

On October 26, 1881, officers of the law clashed with several members of a loose band of rustlers and horse thieves known as the Cochise County Cowboys in a confrontation that became legendary despite lasting under a minute. The setting was Tombstone, in Arizona Territory, and what unfolded there eventually grew into a defining image of the Old West in books and film. Behind the shooting lay months of tension between five outlaws, among them two pairs of brothers, and four men enforcing the law, three of whom were also brothers. What finally set things off was the town marshal's resolve to enforce a city ordinance banning the carrying of firearms within Tombstone, a rule that could only be enforced by disarming the Cowboys themselves.

Standing on the side of the law were Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp, together with Wyatt's companion Doc Holliday. Virgil held the posts of Deputy U.S. Marshal and Town Marshal, making him the one who gave the order to enforce the weapons ban, a choice that triggered the violence. His brothers and Holliday had meanwhile been sworn in as temporary assistant marshals. On the opposing side that day stood five Cowboys present in town: Billy Claiborne, the Clanton brothers Ike and Billy, and the McLaury brothers Tom and Frank. Contrary to what its name suggests, the fight did not happen at or beside the O.K. Corral itself, a property with a front on Allen Street and a rear lined by horse stalls opening onto Fremont Street. Instead, the confrontation unfolded in a tight vacant lot beside C. S. Fly's photographic studio on Fremont Street, some six doors down from the corral's back entrance. In roughly thirty seconds, about thirty rounds went off. When the smoke cleared, three men lay dead, three others were wounded, two had fled the scene, and one remained standing without a scratch, having taken part in the fighting nonetheless. Ike Clanton later brought murder charges against the Earps and Holliday. Following a monthlong preliminary hearing and a short spell behind bars, the accused men were found to have acted within the bounds of the law.

Yet the gunfight hardly settled matters. On December 28, 1881, Virgil was gunned down from ambush and left maimed in what was clearly an assassination attempt carried out by the Cowboys. Then, on March 18, 1882, a shot fired from a darkened alley shattered the glass door of Campbell and Hatch's saloon and billiard hall, killing Morgan. Both times, the men suspected of the attacks produced alibis backed by fellow Cowboys and escaped indictment. Wyatt, who had just been made Deputy U.S. Marshal for Cochise County, responded by taking justice into his own hands through a vendetta of his own making. Sheriff Johnny Behan of Cochise County pursued him, armed with a warrant issued out of Tucson charging Wyatt with the killing of Frank Stilwell.

For decades afterward, the shootout remained largely forgotten, only gaining wide recognition two years after Wyatt Earp's death, when Stuart Lake released his book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal in 1931. That work later inspired the film Frontier Marshal in 1939, My Darling Clementine in 1946, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, a title that gave the incident the name by which it is now remembered. The story surfaced again on screen in Tombstone in 1993 and Wyatt Earp in 1994. In the years since, this episode has been retold across countless Western films and books, cementing its place as a symbol of the popular imagination surrounding the Old West.

Background

Roughly 30 miles from the Mexican border in Arizona Territory, Tombstone came into existence in March 1879 following a silver strike nearby. The settlement expanded at the breakneck pace typical of frontier mining towns. What began as a community of only 100 residents swelled within two years to a population exceeding 7,000 by late 1881, a figure that left out Chinese, Mexicans, women, and children, and this growth made it the biggest boomtown anywhere in the American Southwest.

The riches flowing from silver mining drew professionals and merchants to the area, many of whom settled there with their wives and families in tow. Churches and clergy followed close behind. By 1881 the town could claim upscale restaurants, a bowling alley, a school, an opera house, an ice house, two banks, three newspapers, four churches, and even an ice cream parlor. Alongside these establishments stood 110 saloons, fourteen gambling houses, and a considerable number of brothels, all crowded near a collection of grimy, rough-hewn mines.

Bandits and horse thieves from outside town regularly passed through, and gunfire was hardly uncommon there. Throughout the 1880s, rustling cattle and running alcohol and tobacco over the border became routine criminal enterprises. Because Mexican authorities imposed steep export duties on such goods, those who stole them in Mexico and brought them to sell in Tombstone could turn a substantial profit.

On December 1, 1879, James, Virgil, and Wyatt Earp made their way into a Tombstone still largely defined by canvas tents serving as homes, a handful of saloons and other structures, and the surrounding mines. Just days before this arrival, Virgil had secured a position as Deputy U.S. Marshal covering eastern Pima County, working out of an office in Tombstone itself. Come June 1881, he took on the additional role of town marshal, effectively serving as the community's police chief.

Not every resident of the town held the Earp brothers in high regard, yet the family generally worked to safeguard the interests of local business owners and residents. Wyatt nonetheless once intervened to save the outlaw known as "Curly Bill" Brocius from a lynch mob after Brocius had killed town marshal Fred White by accident. Cochise County's sheriff, Johnny Behan, took a rather different stance, showing sympathy toward rural ranchers and toward the loose band of outlaws known as the Cochise County Cowboys, or simply the Cowboys, a group that counted Brocius among its members. During this era in this part of the country, calling someone a cowboy usually implied he was an outlaw, since honest men working cattle were instead known as cattle herders or ranchers.

Conflicting versions of events

The historical record surrounding this clash is a tangle of contradictions, since so many accounts of what led up to it and what actually happened during it refuse to line up. The papers of that era freely picked sides, and their coverage often bent facts to suit whatever interests the owner favored. John Clum, who ran The Tombstone Epitaph, had a hand in forming a vigilance group called the "Committee of Safety" back in late September 1881. That same year, voters made him the town's very first mayor under its freshly minted charter.

His paper generally leaned toward the concerns of the town's merchants and threw its support behind Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp. On the other side sat Harry Woods, who ran The Daily Nugget and also served as an undersheriff under Behan. Naturally, his coverage tilted toward Behan, toward the Cowboys (several of whom worked as ranchers and owned land part time), and toward the interests of the countryside ranching community.

Most of what survives about the incident comes down to us through weeks of preliminary testimony afterward, commonly called the Spicer hearings. Journalists from both papers sat in on these proceedings and jotted down what witnesses said, both there and during the coroner's inquest, yet only the Nugget's man had actual shorthand skills. As a result, the official court transcript and the two competing newspaper versions ended up diverging sharply.

In the Earps' telling, they acted purely in self-defense when the Cowboys, carrying weapons in defiance of a city ordinance, ignored a legitimate demand to surrender their guns and instead pulled them. The Cowboys, for their part, insisted they had thrown up their hands, put up no fight whatsoever, and were gunned down without mercy by the Earps. Figuring out whose account held the truth proved nearly impossible at the time, and that difficulty has never really gone away.

Curiously, even though the two papers normally told opposite stories, both the Epitaph and the Nugget initially printed accounts favoring the lawmen. This happened partly because Woods, who ran the Cowboy-friendly Nugget, happened to be away when the hearings took place, leaving the writing to a seasoned journalist named Richard Rule. Despite the Nugget staff's tight bond with Behan, the piece Rule published the morning after the shootout actually corroborated what the Earps claimed, a version quite different from the testimony Behan and the Cowboys would later give in court.

Later Nugget articles about the shooting shifted to back Behan's and the Cowboys' account instead. Meanwhile, the Epitaph ran pieces that pushed back completely against this newer Nugget narrative, standing firmly behind the officers. Dr. George Goodfellow, who had examined the bodies of the dead Cowboys, testified that the wound angle on Billy Clanton's wrist proved his hands couldn't have been raised, nor could he have been holding open his coat lapels, contradicting what witnesses sympathetic to the Cowboys claimed under oath.

Decades later, in the early 1930s, a part-time journalist named Howell "Pat" Hayhurst transcribed the hearing testimony as part of a Federal Writers' Project under the Works Progress Administration. One account claims Hayhurst had personal ties to the Behan family as a friend. Once his transcription work was finished, he stored the original document at home, where it was later lost when his house burned down.

Origins of the conflict

The tangled quarrels that eventually spilled into gunfire near the O.K. Corral grew out of loyalties on both sides that ran deep and personal. On one hand stood the Earp brothers, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren, a close clan who drifted from town to town together, taking turns as peace officers, saloonmen, and pimps. Virgil had fought for the Union during the Civil War, and by 1877 he was wearing a badge in Prescott, Arizona Territory, first as a night watchman, later as constable. Wyatt, meanwhile, had cut his teeth guarding the rowdy cattle towns of Wichita and Dodge City in Kansas.

On December 1, 1879, James, Virgil, and Wyatt reached Tombstone with their wives in tow, settling into a boomtown still small enough to count its residents in the hundreds. Just before arriving, Virgil had been named a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Morgan and Warren followed the family west the next summer. Wyatt came hoping to shed his lawman's badge for good, sinking money into a stagecoach line, but the trade proved too crowded to turn a profit. Together the brothers sank funds into mining claims and water rights. Politically they leaned Republican, and none of them had ever punched cattle or run a ranch.

Trouble soon brewed between the Earps and men like Frank and Tom McLaury, Ike and Billy Clanton, Johnny Ringo, and William "Curly Bill" Brocius. These men ran with a loosely organized band of cattle smugglers and horse thieves called the Cowboys, a group tied to numerous crimes. Ike Clanton, given to heavy drinking, hurled threats at the Earp brothers on more than one occasion.

Tombstone diarist George Parson summed up local sentiment plainly: a Cowboy, he wrote, was just another word for a rustler, and a rustler nothing more than a bandit or horse thief under a different name. The San Francisco Examiner went further, branding the Cowboys the most reckless outlaws in that wild country, far worse than common robbers. In Cochise County during the 1880s, calling an honest rancher a "Cowboy" was considered an insult. These outlaws banded together for crime and backed each other in trouble. Virgil believed some of them had gathered in Charleston and sworn, over blood drawn from Johnny Ringo's arm, that they would kill the Earps.

Of the lawmen who stood at the O.K. Corral that day, only Virgil carried any real experience under fire. He had served as constable in Prescott and now held the post of deputy U.S. Marshal in Tombstone, an appointment Crawley Dake had granted him for eastern Pima County on November 27, 1879, days before the family's arrival. After popular marshal Fred White died from an accidental shooting by Brocius, Virgil stepped in as acting town marshal on September 30, 1880. Wyatt's own record included stints as deputy city marshal in Kansas and deputy sheriff in Tombstone.

Virgil sought the marshal's job outright in the November 12, 1880 election but lost to Ben Sippy. Fortune turned his way, however, when Sippy requested a two-week leave on June 6, 1881, and city officials then uncovered $3,000 missing from his accounts (worth roughly $100,000 today). Virgil took over the position soon after. By the time of the shootout he held both federal and city posts simultaneously, though the city later suspended his marshal's role once Ike Clanton brought murder charges against him.

Wyatt's early ventures in Tombstone brought little income, pushing him into work as a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger guarding silver shipments. Pima County named him deputy sheriff on July 28, 1880, a post he held only three months before resigning after the November election. When an assassin later crippled Virgil, Wyatt stepped into his federal marshal's role, keeping it until he left Cochise County in April 1882.

Physically, Wyatt cut a striking figure: blond-haired, standing six feet tall, weighing between 165 and 170 pounds, broad through the shoulders with long arms and a muscular build. A former boxer, he was said to handle a pistol with real skill, and biographer Leo Silva claimed he feared no man alive.

While serving as assistant marshal, Wyatt joined policeman James Masterson and a handful of townsfolk in firing on cowboys fleeing after they shot up a local theater. One of them, George

Earp conflicts with Cowboys

Through the course of 1881, hostility grew steadily between the Earp family and the Clanton and McLaury clans. The friction had roots reaching back to July 25, 1880, when Captain Joseph H. Hurst, commander of Company A, 12th U.S. Infantry, stationed at Fort Bennett, sought out Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp for assistance locating Cowboys suspected of stealing six Army mules from Camp Rucker. Because the mules belonged to the federal government, the matter fell under federal jurisdiction. Hurst brought along four soldiers, and Virgil recruited his brothers Wyatt and Morgan along with Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams to round out the group. The searchers located the missing animals at the McLaury ranch along Babacomari Creek, northwest of Tombstone, along with a branding iron that had been used to alter the "US" mark into a "D8."

Bloodshed was avoided when Cowboy Frank Patterson gave his word that the mules would be handed back, convincing Hurst to call off the posse. Hurst traveled on to Charleston, only to have the Cowboys reappear two days afterward without any mules, mocking both him and the Earps. Angered by this, Hurst had handbills printed naming Frank McLaury as someone who had helped conceal the animals, and the Tombstone Epitaph reprinted the accusation on July 30, 1880. Virgil recalled afterward that McLaury confronted him, asking whether he had posted the notices; when Virgil denied it, McLaury warned that had Virgil been responsible, he would have killed him. McLaury cautioned him further, saying that should Virgil ever again trail them so closely, a fight would be unavoidable. This episode marked the opening clash among the Clantons, the McLaurys, and the Earps.

On the night of March 15, 1881, a stagecoach belonging to Kinnear & Company was making its way from Tombstone toward the freight depot at Benson, Arizona, carrying $26,000 in silver bullion, a sum worth roughly $870,000 today. Bob Paul, who had run unsuccessfully for Pima County Sheriff amid accusations of ballot-stuffing and was still contesting that outcome, had resumed work briefly as a Wells Fargo shotgun guard. He had taken over the driver's position at Contention City because the regular driver, a popular figure named Eli "Bud" Philpot, had fallen ill and was instead riding alongside him with the shotgun.

Just past Contention City near Drew's Station, a figure stepped from the darkness demanding they halt. Three Cowboys tried to rob the coach. From the driver's box, Paul fired his shotgun and drained his revolver toward the attackers, striking one, later identified as Bill Leonard, in the groin. Philpot and a passenger named Peter Roerig, seated in the rear dickey seat, were both cut down by gunfire. The startled horses bolted, and Paul struggled nearly a mile before regaining control, leaving the would-be robbers empty-handed. Paul later remarked that he believed the shot which killed Philpot had actually been meant for him, since he was usually the one riding shotgun.

A pursuit was organized involving Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp, his temporarily deputized brothers Wyatt and Morgan, Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams, former Kansas lawman Bat Masterson (then dealing faro at the Oriental Saloon), and County Sheriff Behan. Wells Fargo posted a reward of $3,600, equal to about $120,000 today, offering $1,200 apiece for the three men involved, dead or alive. Since the robbery involved a mail coach, it constituted both a federal and a territorial offense, drawing lawmen from both jurisdictions into the search.

The trail led to a nearby ranch, where the group came upon a drifter named Luther King. He refused to name his companions until told, falsely, that Doc Holliday's girlfriend had been shot; fearing Holliday's temper, King admitted to holding the horses during the robbery and named Bill Leonard, Harry "The Kid" Head, and Jim Crane, all