Wyatt Earp Trivia
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49 free Wyatt Earp trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Wyatt Earp spent thirty seconds in a vacant lot on Fremont Street in October 1881 and the rest of his life being defined by it. The man behind the legend was a teamster, a faro dealer, a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger, a saloon owner in Nome and a boxing referee whose most famous decision was booed by 15,000 people. This quiz covers the whole arc: the Illinois birthplace, the Peoria arrests, Wichita and Dodge City, the Tombstone years and the vendetta ride, then the long afterlife in San Diego, Alaska and Los Angeles, where his pallbearers included two Hollywood cowboys. Every answer is explained, so you leave knowing why the O.K. Corral hearing mattered and why the 1931 biography changed everything.
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Q 01In which state was Wyatt Earp born in 1848?
Illinois
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.
Q 02Wyatt Earp was named after his father's commanding officer in which war?
Mexican–American 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.
Q 03Who was Tombstone's city marshal at the time of the O.K. Corral gunfight?
Virgil Earp
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.
Q 04What was the loosely organized Arizona outlaw group opposing the Earps called?
The Cowboys
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.
Q 05Which brothers both died in the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral?
The McLaurys
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.
Q 06Which Kansas cow town did Earp arrive in during 1874, later joining its police force?
Wichita
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.
Q 07In 1878 Earp went to Texas tracking which outlaw?
Dave Rudabaugh
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.
Q 08What mineral boom drew the Earp brothers to Tombstone in 1879?
Silver
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.
Q 09Which Earp brother was murdered while playing billiards in March 1882?
Morgan
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.
Q 10Which gambler friend of the Earps stood with the three brothers at the O.K. Corral gunfight?
Doc Holliday
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.
Q 11Earp's reputation suffered after he refereed an 1896 boxing match between which two fighters?
Fitzsimmons and Sharkey
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.
Q 12Earp and Charlie Hoxie opened which saloon during the Nome Gold Rush?
The Dexter
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.
Q 13Which actor played Wyatt Earp in the 1993 film Tombstone?
Kurt Russell
Q 21Earp told his biographer he spent the winter of 1871–72 doing what, with no evidence to support it?
Hunting buffalo
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.
Q 22What ended Earp's first Kansas police job in April 1876?
A fist fight with an ex-marshal
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.
Q 23Which Dakota Territory boomtown did Earp travel to in September 1876, finding all the claims taken?
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.
Q 14The first film to put Wyatt Earp on screen was a 1923 picture about which figure?
Wild Bill Hickok
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.
Q 15Who wrote the flattering 1931 bestseller Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal?
Stuart N. Lake
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.
Q 16What job did teenage Wyatt help his brother with after the family reached California in 1864?
Stagecoach driving
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.
Q 17Earp learned gambling and boxing while hauling supplies for which railroad in 1868?
Union Pacific
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.
Q 18In Lamar, Missouri, Earp took over which office from his father in 1869?
Constable
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.
Q 19In 1871 Earp was charged with stealing what in the Indian country?
Two horses
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.
Q 20In 1872 the future lawman Wyatt Earp was repeatedly arrested around Peoria for his part in what business?
Brothels
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'.
Deadwood
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.
Q 24In January 1876 Earp's revolver slipped from its holster in a Kansas saloon and did what?
Fired and holed his coat
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.
Q 25Which long-barreled revolver is Wyatt Earp famous for carrying, though no researcher has ever traced one to him?
The Buntline Special
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.
Q 26Which famous Dodge City lawman helped Earp run faro tables at Tombstone's Oriental Saloon?
Bat Masterson
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.
Q 27Earp was hired in 1880 to guard stagecoach strongboxes for which express company?
Wells Fargo
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.
Q 28Which outlaw's gun went off while town marshal Fred White tried to disarm him in October 1880?
Curly Bill Brocius
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.
Q 29Who beat Earp to the job of Cochise County sheriff in 1881?
Johnny Behan
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.
Q 30In the 1880 sheriff election, Shibell's outlaw backers allegedly cast ballots in whose names?
Dogs, donkeys and poultry
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.