The gunfight at the O.K. Corral is a shoot-out
that has come to represent the glamour and gore that defined the Wild West. Pitting the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday
against the so-called Cochise County Cowboys in Tombstone, Arizona, here's the messed-up
truth of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The O.K., for "Old Kindersley,"
Corral was a livery business that operated on Tombstone's Fremont Street from 1879 to
1888. Weirdly, the fight itself didn't take place
in or next to the Corral as its name would suggest. Instead, it happened in a vacant lot next
to C.S. Fly's Photographic Studio and Boarding House,
six doors down from the corral. Doc Holliday, the iconic dentist-turned-tubercular
gunman, was a resident of the boardinghouse. One of the fight's main instigators, Ike Clanton,
took cover in the studio while shots were being fired. So did the one man who might have stopped
the carnage, the sheriff of Cochise County, John Behan. Incidentally, C.S. Fly's photographs of late nineteenth century
Tombstone have become indispensable to our understanding of life in the Wild West. Fly did not, however, take any pictures of
the battle or its aftermath, but he did participate in one way: he disarmed the dying Billy Clanton. Why the shootout became associated with the
O.K. Corral is still a bit of a mystery, but maybe it's because "the gunfight in the vacant
lot next to C.S. Fly's Photography Studio and Boarding House"
doesn't quite roll off the tongue. At the time of the fight, Tombstone, Arizona
was a powder keg of warring factions and tensions about to explode. It was also a den of iniquity. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, it had
two dance halls, a dozen gambling parlors, twenty saloons, and, in the words of one resident,
quote, "two Bibles." Tombstone began as a single silver mine. Prospector Ed Schieffelin left an Arizona
Army post in 1877, hoping to strike it rich in the Dragoon Mountains. His friends warned him, that, thanks to the
large Apache presence in the area, he was, in effect, digging his own grave. He proved them wrong, though, and discovered
a rich silver vein he named "Tombstone." A town sprung up around his good fortune,
and by 1880, the place was teeming with horses and stagecoaches, with countless other prospectors,
sex workers, and aspiring politicians. Saloons and brothels did very good business. So did miners. People continued to pull riches from the ground
for seven straight years until a rising water table put an end to operations. Tombstone survived plenty of booms and busts,
and it eventually earned the name "The Town Too Tough To Die," because it rode out the
Great Depression in typical stiff upper lip style. The Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan,
and John Henry "Doc" Holliday have long been cast as the good guys in the shoot out, whereas
their opponents, the Cochise County Cowboys, have been written off as riff-raff. The truth is a lot more complex than that. In fact, the most revered player of all, Wyatt
Earp, was a fugitive from the law when he moved to Tombstone hoping to make his fortune
in silver. As a young man, he stole a horse in Indian
Territory. Then he escaped jail and went on the run,
moving from town to town, and brothel to brothel. Two of the most powerful Cowboys, Tom and
Frank McLaury, came from Iowa in search of cheap land for their cattle, and they weren't
any better or worse than the thousands of other cattle rustlers who moved west in the
1870s and '80s with their eye on Manifest Destiny. One of the main conflicts between the Earps
and the Cowboys was actually pretty mundane. The Cowboys were aligned with Sheriff Behan. Wyatt wanted Behan's job. Meanwhile, Wyatt's brother Virgil, the acting
police chief, had spearheaded a campaign to enforce restrictions on firearms. Cowboys liked their guns. Tensions arose as they are wont to do, but
there are no villains in this tale, and no heroes, either. Just self-interested men bent on amassing
power and wealth on the frontier. "You know, Wyatt, you and I are pretty much
alike, actually. Both of us live with a gun. Only difference is that badge." In March 1881, just seven months before the
shoot-out, the Sandy Bob stagecoach was robbed by a group of masked men. The Earps suspected the McLaury brothers were
behind the robbery; the McLaurys were just as convinced it was the Earps, aided and abetted
by Doc Holliday. In the meantime, Virgil Earp was busy cutting
a deal with Ike Clanton, one of the Cowboys. Virgil, eager to look like a tough lawman
in advance of the local elections, agreed to give Ike all the reward money, no questions
asked, if Clanton turned in outlaws and suspects. Clanton took the deal, but it was moot. King, Leonard, and Crane all ended up dead
before Virgil could capture them. Later, Wyatt Earp, also running for office
and knowing Ike Clanton to be of a persuadable nature, approached the cowboy, suggesting
they fake a stage coach robbery. He and Doc Holliday would scare away the so-called
robbers, and no one would get hurt. Clanton refused to take part, and bad blood
continued to accumulate between the two factions. When, in early October, the Earps arrested
Cowboys Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence for robbing a stagecoach out of Bisbee, the Cowboys
vowed revenge. They didn't have to wait long. In films and other retellings of the shoot-out,
it's Wyatt Earp who usually gets all the glory, but according to most scholars, the real stand-up
guy in this Wild West drama was Virgil Earp. Virgil served as an infantryman in the Union
Army in the Civil War before heading west to join his younger brothers, Wyatt and Morgan. He quickly made a reputation for himself as
an effective, no-nonsense lawman, earning badges in both Prescott, Arizona and Tombstone. Virgil's goal in Tombstone was to put a halt
to the rash of stagecoach robberies that were terrorizing the populace, and his skills as
a sharpshooter went a long way toward helping him accomplish his goal. On that fateful day in October 1881 when a
bloodbath seemed inevitable, Virgil attempted to get the Cowboys to drop their weapons. "Throw up your hands. I want your guns." They didn't, of course, and a firefight ensued,
with Virgil continuing to unload his gun even as he took a bullet to the leg. No one knows for sure what guns were actually
used in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, although it's almost certain that they were all black
powder weapons, the smoke of which would have added to the confusion of an already chaotic
scene. Over the years, a number of antique gun dealers
have profited handsomely from the sale of guns supposedly deployed at the scene. One Colt .45 single action revolver rumored
to have belonged to Wyatt Earp sold at auction for $225,000, and a shotgun reportedly used
by Holliday went for $150,000. But the authenticity of those weapons is still
up for debate. Lawmen at the time often carried single action
revolvers. Holliday supposedly used a 10-gauge, double-barreled
shotgun given to him by Virgil. The Cowboys all claimed to have been unarmed
at the time of the shootout, but with the exceptions of Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne,
who fled the scene, that obviously turned out to be untrue. Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton were found
dead at the scene with Colt Frontier revolvers in their hands. Tom McLaury was almost certainly a victim
of Holliday's gun. His body was riddled with at least 12 buckshot
wounds. So much for Virgil's gun control crusade. As enemies of the Earps, the Cochise County
Cowboys have sometimes been portrayed as evil men bent on killing, but for the most part,
they were considered by the locals to be more of a nuisance than a group of real villains. The posse, which boasted up to 300 members
in its heyday, specialized in cattle rustling and small-time heists. They rode through towns in the Arizona territory,
brandishing their pistols and putting the fear of God into women, children, and preachers,
and they became sworn enemies of the Earps, who wanted to bring the so-called Cowboys
to heel. "I'll see you soon. I'll see you soon." A number of petty incidents of horse theft
and retribution between the Earps and the Cowboys took place between 1879 and the shoot-out
in 1881, the bulk of which put the McLaurys and Clantons and other Cowboys in a bad light. But Hollywood and historians may have actually
gotten it wrong. Ike Clanton, the most demonized figure in
the story, ran a lunch counter. And Tom McLaury was unarmed at the time of
the shoot-out. Maybe the Cowboys weren't so dastardly after
all. Most versions of the O.K. Corral story put
the blame for the gun fight squarely on the shoulders of Cowboy Ike Clanton who, Wild
West lore suggests, repeatedly threatened to kill the Earps for getting in his cattle
rustling way. In the days leading up to the shoot-out, the
Cowboys, the Earps, and Doc Holliday were all quite busy drinking and trading barbs
and threats, and Clanton was overheard in more than one Tombstone saloon telling patrons
that he planned to shoot the Earps as soon as he could get his hands on a weapon. But Clanton was known for talking a big game,
and, according to his surviving relatives, the Earps and Doc Holliday were the real instigators,
robbing stagecoaches and getting away with it and harassing the Clantons and McLaurys
whenever they got a chance. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between. What we know is that, after an evening of
drinking and bragging, the Earps and Holliday faced off against Clanton and his Cowboys
in a historic firefight that killed Ike's brother, Billy, and stained Ike's reputation
forever. He is now often described as a coward and
a blowhard because, having boasted about his gunslinging prowess, he fled the scene of
battle, later bringing charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. All four men, incidentally, were acquitted,
and Ike Clanton was killed by police in 1887. Wyatt Earp described the Cochise County Cowboys
as, quote, "low lifes and cow thieves." Regardless, the town mourned Billy Clanton
and Tom and Frank McLaury in spectacular style, with 2,300 people paying their respects over
the course of the day-long memorial. The funeral procession wound for two blocks
and was comprised of three hundred people on foot, 22 carriages, and several men on
horseback. A brass band led the way to the cemetery. And the cemetery where the men were buried,
Boothill, is so-called because the people interred there often died with their boots
still on. "If you happen to see this gentleman, tell
him I'll be waiting for him at Boothill. There's only one direction to travel from
there." Some tales of the Wild West are greatly exaggerated
in their wildness, but in the months leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as
well as in the months following, no one, no one, was charged with a crime. Masked men robbed stagecoaches and got away
with it. Or, in the case of the outlaws suspected of
the Sandy Bob stagecoach robbery, they were killed before they could stand trial. Men simply took justice into their own hands,
meaning that, after the Earps and Doc Holliday were exonerated for the killings of Billy
Clanton and the McLaury brothers, Morgan Earp was shot dead in a saloon. Wyatt, vowing vengeance for his brother, assembled
a posse and unleashed a vendetta, gunning down Frank Stilwell and his accomplices in
cold blood. Newspaper accounts of the gun battle varied
greatly, depending on the individual publication's alliances with the fighters. The Tombstone Epitaph sided with the Earps
and the Nugget was with the Cowboys. The Epitaph's name had many joking that it
would be dead within a year, but the newspaper proved to be resilient and relevant, partially
because of founder John P. Clum's mission to use its pages to rid Tombstone of corruption,
as well as those pesky Cochise Cowboys. Clum wasn't entirely pure in his motives. The Epitaph, in addition to aligning itself
with the Earps, was also in the pocket of mining interests in the town. The Nugget, in contrast, championed the Cowboys
and was, in its coverage of the gunfight, unabashedly biased against Holliday and the
Earps. "I guess if you're a sheriff cutting deals
with local cattle thieves, it does well to keep their favorite paper sweet." In one article about the battle's aftermath,
the writer strains credulity with regard to the Clanton boys, stating: "They did not bear the reputation of being
of a quarrelsome disposition, but were known as fighting men, and have generally conducted
themselves in a quiet and orderly manner when in Tombstone." Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the
bell so you don't miss a single one.
