Wyatt Earp Tells of the Gunfight Near the O.K. Corral

By John Richard Stephens and Wyatt Earp

Now find out what really happened at the infamous gunfight near the O.K. Corral--one of the largest shootouts in Wild West history. This comprehensive look at the shootout explains the causes of the gunfight, what happened during the fight, and the bloody vendetta that followed.

The gunfight erupted when three of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday confronted a group of five rustlers who were waiting outside Doc’s lodgings. Approximately thirty seconds and thirty gunshots later three rustlers were dead and three of the Earp party were wounded. Soon after, Morgan Earp was assassinated and Virgil Earp nearly so, launching Wyatt, Doc, and several friends on a vigilante vendetta hunting down and killing those responsible.

Much of this story is in Wyatt’s own historic words. Also included is a detailed analysis of the gunfight with shot-by-shot diagrams. While most of this information is covered in Stephens’s book Wyatt Earp Speaks, it is scattered throughout and takes some digging to extract. (It can also be found in the expanded ebook edition of Wyatt Earp Speaks from Fern Canyon Press.) Here the most important material is assembled in chronological order to provide a better understanding of what the fight was all about.

“Bullets were flying so fast that I could not keep track of them. Frank McLaury had given a yell when I shot him and made for the street with his hand over his stomach.” --Wyatt Earp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fern Canyon Press
• Release date: Nov 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780988790230

John Richard Stephens

John Richard Stephens Most of John’s twenty-three books have been repeatedly published in various editions by a number of the world’s top publishers. His books include Commanding the Storm, Weird History 101, Wyatt Earp Speaks, Voodoo, Adventure!, The King of the Cats, and Mark Twain’s Hawai‘i. His books have been selections of the Civil War Trust, the Preferred Choice Book Club, the Quality Paperback Book Club and the Book of the Month Club. His work has been published as far away as India and Singapore and has been translated into Japanese and Finnish.

Book preview

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Published by Fern Canyon Press

Copyright 2000 by John Richard Stephens. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 0-9887902-3-8

ISBN-13: 978-0-9887902-3-0

Ebook Edition version 1.1

Dedicated to the memory of my friend

and Tombstone expert

Carl Chafin

Preface

This booklet was produced in response to requests for a relatively brief, accessible, inexpensive overview of the famous gunfight near the O.K. Corral, the events that led up to it and the what happened after it.

While most of this information is covered in my book, Wyatt Earp Speaks, it is scattered throughout and it takes some digging to extract it from all the other details, side stories, and additional information on the lives of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. So, while that book covers these events in much more detail, I thought it would be helpful to pull the most important material together and put it chronologically in order to provide a better understanding of what the shootout was all about. (Note that most of this was later added to the expanded edition of that book.)

I hope you find this booklet informative and enlightening regarding this important event in a fascinating period of Western history.

Tombstone map.

Wyatt Earp Tells

of the Gunfight

Wyatt Earp didn’t go to Tombstone in the Arizona Territory looking for trouble, but he found it in spades. He went there following the American Dream—seeking riches and success. The West was a place where cities were practically springing up overnight; where a poor man could quickly make a fortune. It was the land of opportunity, and in 1881 Tombstone was at the pinnacle.

Just four years earlier, the area where Tombstone would be was a high desert wilderness of dust, rock, scrub brush and Apaches. When prospector Ed Schieffelin talked of going there, his friends said the only thing he’d find would be his tombstone. Instead he found silver. Lots of it. The silver mines in that area would eventually yield $40 million. Ed suddenly became a very rich man.

Silver is not like gold in that one man with a pan or sluice and a bottle of mercury can soon have a bag full of the stuff. It requires deep mines, large mills, lots of men and big money to extract silver from rock. Most of the miners worked for companies run by wealthy businessmen. A stream of East Coast investors passed through town and a nationwide recession prompted an influx of a class of well-educated professionals.

When Wyatt, his brothers—Virgil and James—and their wives, arrived there in November of 1879 (his brothers Morgan and Warren arrived a few months later), the town’s population was about 900—almost double what it was just two months previously. It doubled again in the next two months. By the time of the shootout two years later, Tombstone’s population had shot up to about 5,000. It wasn’t a rustic frontier town; it was a brand new town with modern amenities to keep the rich businessmen happy. It had a bowling alley, a gym, a swimming pool, a roller rink, a baseball team, a library, ice cream parlors, an oyster bar, and gourmet restaurants. For entertainment there were dances, socials, costume balls and even Shakespearean plays.

Wyatt Earp never was a cowboy as he is often depicted in paintings and films—he and his brothers were townspeople. The townspeople were largely Northerners who came to Tombstone by way of California. Wyatt’s family was originally from Iowa and Illinois, but his parents had settled in San Bernardino, California.