Wyatt Earp "The Legend Gunman"

Wyatt Earp

The legendary gunman/marksman stories and films up to current times, Wyatt Earp, born on March 19, 1848, in Illionis, USA. Since childhood, Wyatt had known weapons. Not surprising since his father, Capt. Nicholas Porter Earp, his profession as a soldier and is one of the commanders in the United States-Mexico war.

Earp spent his early life in Iowa. After his first wife, Urilla Sutherland Earp, died he was arrested, sued twice, escaped from jail, and was arrested three times for "keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame". He landed in the cattle boom town of Wichita, Kansas where he became a deputy marshal for one year and developed a solid reputation as a lawman. In 1876 he followed his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas where he became an assistant marshal. In the winter of 1878 he went to Texas to gamble where he met John Henry "Doc" Holliday whom Earp credited with saving his life.

Continually drawn to boomtowns and opportunity, Earp left Dodge City in 1879 and with his brothers James and Virgil, moved to Tombstone, Arizona. The Earps bought an interest in the Vizina mine and some water rights. There, the Earps clashed with a loose federation of outlaw Cowboys. Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt held various law enforcement positions that put them in conflict with Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, Billy Clanton, and Ike Clanton, who threatened to kill the Earps. The conflict escalated over the next year, culminating on October 26, 1881 in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which the Earps and Holliday killed three of the Cowboys. In the next two months Virgil was ambushed and maimed, and Morgan was assassinated. Wyatt, his brother Warren, Holliday, and others pursued the Cowboys they thought responsible in a vendetta.

After leaving Tombstone, Earp continually invested in various mining interests and saloons. He and his third wife in their later years moved between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert, where the town of Earp, California was named after him. Although his brother Virgil had far more experience as a sheriff, constable, and marshal, because Wyatt outlived Virgil and due to a largely fictionalized biography written by Stuart Lake that made Wyatt famous, he has been the subject of and model for a large number of movies, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction.