49 Fun Facts About Wyatt Earp

In which state was Wyatt Earp born in 1848?

Illinois: he was born in Monmouth, but the family soon moved to Pella, Iowa. By family legend, 13-year-old Wyatt kept running away from there to join his older brothers in the Civil War, and his father hauled him home each time.

Wyatt Earp was named after his father's commanding officer in which war?

Mexican–American War: Nicholas Earp was sent home after a mule kicked him, arriving weeks before the birth. He gave the baby the full name of his company's captain, Wyatt Berry Stapp.

Who was Tombstone's city marshal at the time of the O.K. Corral gunfight?

Virgil Earp was Tombstone's police chief that day. Films put Wyatt in charge, but he was only his older brother's assistant, and the order to give up the guns was not his.

What was the loosely organized Arizona outlaw group opposing the Earps called?

The Cowboys: around Tombstone in 1881 the word was an insult, not a job. It meant a loose band of rustlers and roughnecks, and an honest cattleman would have resented being called one.

Which brothers both died in the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral?

The McLaurys, Tom and Frank, died with Billy Clanton, while the two wounded Earps lived. Sympathy ran to the dead: some 300 mourners walked to Boot Hill as about 2,000 watched.

Which Kansas cow town did Earp arrive in during 1874, later joining its police force?

Wichita: before he wore a badge there, Earp helped an off-duty officer run down a man who had stolen a wagon, and the local paper praised him. He joined the force in 1875 and left for Dodge City the next year.

In 1878 Earp went to Texas tracking which outlaw?

Dave Rudabaugh's trail ran some 400 miles to Fort Griffin, Texas. A saloonkeeper there, John Shanssey, pointed Earp to a gambler who had played cards with the outlaw and knew he had doubled back toward Kansas.

What mineral boom drew the Earp brothers to Tombstone in 1879?

Silver: word of a huge strike reached the brothers from Virgil, who was already in Arizona. The mining riches they hoped for never came, which is what pushed Wyatt back into law work.

Which Earp brother was murdered while playing billiards in March 1882?

Morgan was shot through the window of a Tombstone pool hall late at night. Wyatt sat watching the game: he had heard threats that day and would not leave his brother alone.

Which gambler friend of the Earps stood with the three brothers at the O.K. Corral gunfight?

Doc Holliday was wounded but survived. The town's marshal had deputized him for the walk to the O.K. Corral, a choice later called unwise, but no crime.

Earp's reputation suffered after he refereed an 1896 boxing match between which two fighters?

Fitzsimmons and Sharkey met in San Francisco, and Earp stepped into the ring carrying a revolver. Fitzsimmons was dominating when Earp called a foul in the eighth round and gave Sharkey the fight, to boos and catcalls.

Earp and Charlie Hoxie opened which saloon during the Nome Gold Rush?

The Dexter opened in 1899 as a 'better class' saloon. Earp had come north to mine the miners: selling drinks to the men who dug.

Which actor played Wyatt Earp in the 1993 film Tombstone?

Kurt Russell took the role a year before Kevin Costner played the same man in a rival epic. Earp himself spent his last years around Hollywood trying to get his story told, and nobody there wanted it.

The first film to put Wyatt Earp on screen was a 1923 picture about which figure?

Wild Bill Hickok (1923) was the first film to feature Earp as a character. He had spent years courting Hollywood to tell his own story, and ended up a supporting figure in someone else's.

Who wrote the flattering 1931 bestseller Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal?

Stuart N. Lake wrote it with Earp's help, but it came out two years after Earp died. Its largely fictionalized portrait of a fearless lawman made a folk hero of a man whose name had been darkened by a disputed boxing decision.

What job did teenage Wyatt help his brother with after the family reached California in 1864?

Stagecoach driving was his older brother's job, and Wyatt rode along to help. By the next spring he was hauling freight himself, with stops as far off as Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

Earp learned gambling and boxing while hauling supplies for which railroad in 1868?

Union Pacific crews were grading track across Wyoming, and at the railhead camps Earp learned to box and to gamble. Gambling stuck: he made much of his living at it, in saloon after saloon across the West.

In Lamar, Missouri, Earp took over which office from his father in 1869?

Constable was his first law job: his father resigned the post and Wyatt was appointed in his place. It ended badly, with Earp leaving Lamar in 1871 under accusations that he had kept public money.

In 1871 Earp was charged with stealing what in the Indian country?

Two horses, each worth $100 by the federal charge sheet. Earp was never tried: accounts differ on whether he broke out of jail or skipped bail, and a man charged alongside him was later acquitted.

In 1872 the future lawman Wyatt Earp was repeatedly arrested around Peoria for his part in what business?

Brothels: he was picked up in at least three raids that year, the last aboard a floating one called the Beardstown Gunboat. A local paper wrote him off as 'the Peoria Bummer'.

Earp told his biographer he spent the winter of 1871–72 doing what, with no evidence to support it?

Hunting buffalo was his story, but arrest records place him in Peoria that same winter. Nothing from the time shows he hunted at all, and researchers suspect the tale was meant to cover the gap.

What ended Earp's first Kansas police job in April 1876?

A fist fight with an ex-marshal: William Smith was running against Earp's boss, and his remarks earned him a beating. Earp was fined $30 and dropped, though the local paper added that he had made an excellent officer.

Which Dakota Territory boomtown did Earp travel to in September 1876, finding all the claims taken?

Deadwood had no claims left to stake, so by his own account Earp spent the winter hauling firewood into the camp instead, and left in the spring with a healthy profit.

In January 1876 Earp's revolver slipped from its holster in a Kansas saloon and did what?

Fired and holed his coat: he had left the hammer resting on a loaded chamber, and the gun went off as it fell. The paper said the shot started 'a lively stampede' from the back room.

Which long-barreled revolver is Wyatt Earp famous for carrying, though no researcher has ever traced one to him?

The Buntline Special, a Colt with a foot-long barrel, first appeared in print in 1931, after Earp's death. Colt's records show no order for it, and nothing from his lifetime mentions the gun.

Which famous Dodge City lawman helped Earp run faro tables at Tombstone's Oriental Saloon?

Bat Masterson came to Tombstone at Earp's call to deal faro. Earp held a quarter share of the Oriental's gambling in return for keeping order, and a rival had hired toughs to scare off the customers.

Earp was hired in 1880 to guard stagecoach strongboxes for which express company?

Wells Fargo paid him to guard the stages out of Tombstone. That summer he traded the job for a deputy sheriff's badge, and a younger brother took over guarding the strongbox.

Which outlaw's gun went off while town marshal Fred White tried to disarm him in October 1880?

Curly Bill Brocius was knocked flat with Earp's six-shooter and arrested on the spot. He walked free after the dying marshal said the shot had been an accident.

Who beat Earp to the job of Cochise County sheriff in 1881?

Johnny Behan got the governor's appointment. Earp said he had stepped aside on Behan's promise to make him undersheriff, a promise Behan did not keep.

In the 1880 sheriff election, Shibell's outlaw backers allegedly cast ballots in whose names?

Dogs, donkeys and poultry were given names and voted, the story goes, in a precinct that returned 104 ballots, 103 of them for Shibell. The courts later handed the office to his rival.

Earp named a Tombstone mining claim after which common-law wife, his partner before Josephine Marcus?

Mattie Blaylock had lived as his wife since Dodge City, and the claim carried her name. After Tombstone they parted, and she died of a laudanum overdose in an Arizona mining town in 1888.

How long did the gunfight in Tombstone last?

About 30 seconds was all it took. Three men were dead and three more wounded when the smoke cleared, and Wyatt alone came through without a scratch.

How did the Earps' murder case in Tombstone end?

A judge freed them without trial: Wells Spicer heard weeks of testimony and found no cause to try them for murder. He still called the marshal's choice of helpers 'injudicious'.

Whose hat was found near where Wyatt's older brother was ambushed in December 1881?

Ike Clanton's hat was found at the scene, but he produced an alibi and the charges were dismissed. The ambush cost the victim the use of his left arm for life.

During his 1882 vendetta ride, Wyatt Earp was wanted for murder while holding what office?

Deputy U.S. marshal: he had wired for the badge after his brother was ambushed, and rode at the head of a federal posse. The county sheriff chased him all the while with a murder warrant.

Whose body was found beside the Tucson railroad tracks in March 1882, the first death of Earp's vendetta?

Frank Stilwell lay riddled with bullets, found the day after Earp's party saw a wounded brother onto a train there. A murder warrant followed Earp out of Arizona.

Earp always said he killed Curly Bill at Iron Springs with which weapon?

A shotgun, by Earp's account, fired after the outlaws shot first and left him unhurt. Curly Bill's friends swore he was alive, yet he was never seen in Tombstone again.

Which Arizona cattle rancher sheltered Earp's posse at his ranch during the vendetta ride?

Henry Hooker fed the riders and their worn-out horses at his Sierra Bonita Ranch. When the sheriff's posse rode in on their trail, he refused it help.

An interview for historian Hubert Howe Bancroft credited Earp with killing over a dozen of what?

Stage robbers and cattle thieves, with murderers thrown in, made up the tally. The record of his gunfights accounts for far fewer.

In the gold camp of Eagle City, Idaho, the Earps paid $2,250 for what to house their dance hall?

A circus tent, 50 feet across, became their dance hall in a Coeur d'Alene gold camp. They soon added a saloon called the White Elephant.

In 1880s San Diego, Wyatt Earp put his money into a boom in what?

Real estate, and he ran gambling halls on the side. He lost heavily when the boom went bust, and he later moved back to San Francisco.

Earp won his first race horse in what way?

In a card game, and the prize started his long run as a racing man. He went on to manage a stable of horses in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.

Josephine claimed she and Earp were married by the captain of which racetrack millionaire's yacht?

Lucky Baldwin's, in her telling; the horse-racing tycoon was a friend of the couple. Nothing on paper backs the story, and she is usually listed as his common-law wife.

In 1905, who reportedly confessed to taking $1,000 to fake the foul behind Earp's notorious boxing decision?

A doctor, B. Brookes Lee, said in 1905 that he had fixed the winner up to look fouled. The beaten man, he added, had been entitled to the decision all along.

Which gold rush pulled Wyatt and Josephine Earp out of Arizona in 1897?

The Klondike drew them north by steamer, and on the way Earp filled in as a deputy marshal at the Alaskan port of Wrangell. They ended up in Nome, where his money came from a saloon.

Which gold-rush writer joined Earp on a visit to film director Raoul Walsh?

Jack London was the name that got the pair shown in, by Walsh's own account. At the meal afterward, the director wrote, Charlie Chaplin stopped by in awe of the old Tombstone lawman.

Which two Western film stars served as pallbearers at Earp's 1929 funeral?

William S. Hart and Tom Mix, cowboy stars of the silent screen, walked beside men from his Tombstone days, among them former mayor John Clum. The film idols had befriended him in his last years in Los Angeles.

Earp's ashes were secretly buried in a Jewish cemetery in which town near San Francisco?

Colma holds the Marcus family plot at Hills of Eternity, where Josephine had the ashes buried. The old lawman lies among her relatives, and she joined him there in 1944.

Which actor, then playing Earp on TV, offered a reward for the gravestone stolen in 1957?

Hugh O'Brian, star of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, put up the money after thieves dug five feet into the plot hunting for the urn. They missed the ashes and carried off the stone instead.