Camp Gagnon - Wyatt Earp's Dark Side: Justice At Any Cost

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Who was Wyatt Earp, and was he really the best sheriff gunslinger? Today, we take a closer look at the RAD life of one of the most famous figures from the Wild West. We’ll talk about the Earp Brothers, Wyatt Earp's early life, becoming the law in Wichita, rivalry with the Clanton gang, and other interesting topics. WELCOME TO History CAMP! 🏕️👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:2:17 The Earp Brothers Go to War5:19 Wyatt Starts Buffalo Hunting6:42 Join The Cattle Farming10:12 Becoming The Law In Wichita 13:13 The Move to Dodge City15:32 Meeting Doc Holliday 19:02 Settling Down in Tombstone25:51 Rivalry w/ The Clanton Gang28:24 The Shootout at O.K. Corral34:54 O.K. Corral Aftermath + Vendetta Ride38:17 Forming a Peace Commission + Refereeing Boxing Match40:22 The Final Days of Wyatt Earp

Tombstone, Arizona, 1881, a time when silver brought the money, saloons and gambling halls brought the crowds, and outlaws brought the chaos. And in the middle of all of this chaos stood one man. His name, Wyatt Earp, a former lawman trying to keep order in a city that didn't want it. And Earp wasn't born a legend, but he made himself into him. From Buffalo hunting on the planes to running saloons in dangerous towns, Earp walked the line between lawman and outlaw. But it wasn't until October 26th during a 30-second shootout at the OK Corral that his story would truly be branded into history. Today, we're going in to the story in life of Wyatt Earp and how one violent day in Tombstone, Arizona, turned him into an American legend. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to History Camp.

My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent. where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories throughout all history forever and always. Cresas, how are you? What's up, baby? All right, all right, all right. You know what? Cresos, enough.

Because today, we have a fascinating story. We're diving deep to the American Great West. Gunfighters, Cowboys, the Works, the Earp brothers, specifically Wyatt Earp. Well, let's go all the way back, shall we? October 26, 1881. This is the date of one of the most famous gunfights in American history. basically in just 30 seconds three men were shot and dying

and when the shooting stopped four men were the winners Doc Holliday you probably heard his name and the Earp brothers and this shootout this moment in American history basically would make the Earp family name famous in

you know basically Western lore forever in that single moment they came to stand for both good and also the bad times of that time period a time of lawlessness and uh or you could say vigilanteism, but truly one of the most fascinating times

in American history ever. Originally, there were Fiverr brothers who stayed united and strong together, but their success came mainly from their natural leader, Wyatt. Now, Wyatt Earp, you probably heard the name, maybe you even heard Doc Holiday, you've heard of these gunfights,

but you don't know the details. What you need to know is that Wyatt Earp was a man of action. He was born and was raised and lived in an environment which would, you know, hold all sorts of, you know, theories of small accounts in which, you know, survival and, you know, eminence would be achieved through basically what you did.

Basically, the type of person that you were. Now, he lived in this, you know, changing time in the American West that was still being settled. You have Native Americans, you know, battling, but also being forced in the reservations. The Buffalo is getting basically completely wiped out. And railroads are getting built and sprung up all over the country, mining towns, gold rushes. All of this is happening in this very specific period of time in this very specific place. And all of this created tons of opportunities for people like the Earps who were, you know, willing to head west. So who were these five Earp brothers, right? We got Wyatt, James, Virgil, Morgan, and Warren.

Now, these brothers not only, you know, were shaped by the environment in which they grew up, but they also changed the environment. I mean, they shaped the times that they were living in. So their father, Nicholas Porter Earp, married his first wife, a woman named Abigail Storm in 1836. However, the marriage only lasted two years. Abigail died. And the next year, Nicholas met and married a woman named Victoria Ann Cooxie. And Victoria Ann and Nicholas became the parents of some of the most famous brothers to ever live in the American West.

So Nicholas Earp was probably not, you know, the most gentle father, as you can imagine. You know, he wasn't cruel necessarily, but gentle parenting was not really a thing in this time. This is the American West, you can imagine. So he taught his boys that if they had problems, they needed to fight, and they needed to fight their ways to get through him. So wife on the frontier was pretty difficult,

as you can imagine. The brothers had to learn that in order to make it, they had to be tough. And they were a part of this family that moved around a lot and constantly just going further and further west. And this pattern of always moving was very common amongst, you know, American families in the 1800s that were homesteading or, you know, on the frontier. And this restless spirit showed up in the Earp family. And it was actually something that many families shared kind of in this window. Now, life on the frontier is already tough, as you can imagine. I mean, you have no amenities.

You're basically like camping with your family. just trying to survive off the land, battling, you know, other people trying to take your land, natives that are there that are trying to preserve their land. But as you can imagine, things get even worse because at the same time, which is an interesting part of history that I feel like no one really talks about, there is a scuffle, you could say, between the Union and the Southern states. Yeah, the Civil War. Ever heard of it? It happens in 1861 and quite literally changes the entire landscape of America. And even though Nicholas Earp supports to the south, three of his sons joined the Union Army to fight for the North. So the oldest son,

Newton, who was a half-brother, along with James and Virgil, all enlisted into the Union Army. Now, according to the story, Wyatt tried to join the army by, you know, running away from home, but his father caught him and forced him to return to the family farm. Now, it's speculated this affected Wyatt deeply, you know, just like it affected his entire generation who grew up during the Civil War. His father had fought in the Mexican War and his brothers had fought in the Civil War, but Wyatt, he never got tested in battle. And some people speculate this is why he was so eager to go out and find adventure later on in his life. So while his brothers fought in this horrible bloody war, Wyatt stayed home and worked as a farmer.

He wasn't, you know, happy just plowing fields and dropping seeds. So he got a job with the banning stage line. And in 1869, Virgil and Wyatt came back to Illinois, but they found out that their father had moved the family again. this time to Missouri, a little town known as Lamar. So Wyatt moved to Lamar too, and that's where he first worked as a cop. Wyatt ran for the job of constable against his older brother, and he won. He got married, and it looked like he was going to have just a pretty quiet, sort of, you know, regular, successful life ahead of him.

But then his wife dies from typhoid fever. Wyatt, as you can imagine, is heartbroken, and he's kind of wandering into Native American territory where he soon is having legal trouble for stealing horses. So he had to run away to the Kansas plains where he joins up with buffalo hunters. I mean, this guy's whole life, just in a matter of like a year or two, goes completely off the rails.

Like his wife passes away, he starts stealing horses, gets caught, has to flee. So for a while, he's now joined these buffalo hunters, and this hunt kind of satisfied why it's need for adventure. So there's a new chapter in his life that's unfolding, and he saw events and met people who would always be a part, of his life right in this very window. So he went in and out of buffalo hunting because, you know, he made good money doing it. And since he didn't have many other job options, this was one of the few

things available to a young man like him. So in less than a year, he would learn lessons that would basically make him a leader for the rest of his entire life. He learned how to handle conflicts and disagreements, how to adjudicate issues and theft. He figured out what goals he wanted to pursue and how to reach them. And why it really got his education as a young man in these buffalo hunting camps, which are rough and just constantly changing. So Wyatt could see that buffalo hunting, you know, isn't a long-term career, just a way to, you know, make some money,

and not to mention the herds are slowly thinning out. So he moved on to his next big opportunity in the cattle towns. So basically, to make sense of this, when the Civil War ends, the Industrial Revolution begins, and railroads become the most important way to transport goods across the country. And one thing people really wanted was Texas beef. This was a massive commodity.

at the time, and Texas had a lot of it. I mean, the Longhorn Cattle in Texas was extremely profitable, and they needed to get to market. So the way to do this was to drive the cattle north to Kansas and load them onto trains at railroad stops in places like Dodge City, Ellsworth, Wichita, Kansas, and it was about like an 800-mile trip along the Chislem Trail to reach the cattle towns of Kansas. Now, Texas ranchers would hire Cowboys to get their cattle to market, and this was an exhausting, difficult, and dangerous job. We actually have a quote from a journal of one of these cattle shippers by the name of Joseph McCoy.

He says, if anyone imagines that the life of a ranchman or a cowboy is one of ease or luxury, a brief trial will dispel the illusion. I mean, yeah, as you can imagine, this shit sucks. Like, it's hard. You're dealing with these massive animals that are basically trying to kill you, and you're trying to load them up onto these train cars and ship them out. And so cowboys were usually very young, mostly single between like 16 and 23 years old. And after spending two or three months on the trail, they were ready to have fun.

And they had some money in their pockets from selling the cattle. So to Texas Cowboys, Kansas felt like the great, you know, the greatest place ever. This was a place to celebrate. And it marked the end of the line for millions of these longhorn cattle and the finish of a long, tiring journey from Texas. So almost overnight, wild and lawless town sprang of. up to give these young cowboys with money a way to spend it. And Wyatt Earp, always looking for opportunities, saw endless ways to make money for himself and his brothers in these booming Kansas towns. So I wonder if like an almost an analog would be like, like, uh, like oil drilling.

Like you have these places where you have guys that go on for like, you know, two or three weeks at a time. They work on these oil rigs. They get paid great money. And then they spend, you know, three or four weeks off. And many of them party. I know some specific stories from out in Australia. You have guys in the Western states in Perth that go out doing like natural oil mining and they go out there, they get the oil. They come back or the gas or whatever. They come back and then they just do blow for like three weeks. And that's their life.

And so now there's like infrastructure to basically get the money from these guys that are going out there just blue collar, roughneck dudes and just basically get their money. And this was the, you know, Wild West 1800s version of that. So these cattle towns basically had no police, no law enforcement. and they were filled with single young dudes who had a ton of money and nowhere to spend it. So, as you can imagine, all kinds of people moved into these towns to basically take advantage of them. And the cattle towns were some of these just the wildest, most out-of-control places in the entire West. So the main businesses were saloons, gambling halls, and prostitution. And all of these, as you can imagine, are completely unregulated, completely illegal, and massively profitable.

You can see what's happening here, right? This is setting the stage for just the greatest time ever. You can imagine Vegas, but like without any of the police or infrastructure. So when the Cowboys, you know, came bursting into these towns, someone needed to keep the order and the towns needed law officers to make sure that the Cowboys had fun, but didn't just completely get out of control and do a bunch of drugs and kill each other. And this is where the Earp Brothers stepped in. So in 1875, Wyatt moved to Wichita, Kansas.

And through people he knew in politics, he got appointed as the city policeman and immediately started taking control of the situation. And as you can imagine, I mean, for me at least, I don't think it'd be that hard to be the police in the most lawless town with a bunch of dudes that are young and dumb with a bunch of money tired from, you know, their long journeys. I haven't seen a woman in weeks. So the Wichita Weekly Beacon in 1875 actually said of Wyatt Earp that he is an excellent officer whose conduct has been exceptional. So amongst the, you know, high brass and bureaucracy of the town, he was well respected and a man of honor. And so the job of a city policeman, you know, you made big bucks, about $60 a month. And even back then, that's not a ton of money.

Certainly not enough money to get by. So the Earps found another way to make some income. White Earp and the other police officers were known as the, quote, fighting pimps. So these were men who would spend time in saloons. And when they weren't working as police, they could usually be found, you know, dealing cards in saloons or like working out of brothels like, you know, security or just basically almost as a pimp. And James Earp was also in Wichita with his wife, Bessie, who supposedly ran a prostitution house. Allegedly. We don't know if this is a fact.

Okay, I'd just always throw allegedly out there any time I'm accusing someone's wife of being a madam, specifically back in 1800s. Bessie and someone called Sally Earp were arrested several times for prostitution. Now, Wyatt, you know, the protagonist, the hero of our story, was often involved in gambling in the different places where he lived and worked. However, gamblers back then weren't viewed in the same ways we see them today. We tend to think of gambling as like a little bit of like a gray area, right? It's like a little shady. It's a little, uh, is like, how legal is it? Okay, it's legal.

If you gamble here, it's fine. If you gamble here, it's too weird. But gamblers in the West were kind of given a lot of respect. And Wyatt, like most lawmen of that time, uh, sometimes it was hard to tell which side of the law he was really on. So Wyatt and his brothers worked on both sides of the law because that's just kind of how these communities operated, right? You could be a good policeman on the one hand, but you could also be gambling, dealing cards, maybe meeting up with a prostitute or two, and why it was no different. So, of course, he starts getting in trouble with some local politics. He got into a fistfight

with someone who was opposed to his boss, like just on the strength. He was like, you don't fuck with my people. I don't fuck with you. Bang, let's throw hands. So this made the town council turned against him as a police officer. They're basically like, dude, what are you doing? You're supposed to uphold the law and you're doing the exact same shit. it that all the cowboys are doing, how are you the actual, you know, authority in this town? So even though his boss tried hard to keep him and even though he did a good job as a cop, he was ultimately fired. Now, not discouraged at all by getting fired, Wyatt decided to move on and work as a lawman in another growing cattle town. So in 1876, he got a job with the police force

in Dodge City, Kansas. And it made sense for, you know, Wyatt and his brothers to move to Dodge City, or at least for Wyatt it did after his time in the Buffalo camps, you know. So Dodge City was the center of all this cattle business. So he was familiar with the landscape, you know, more or less, having spent some time there as a young man. So he went to Dodge City where he could continue gambling and build his reputation as a cop. So all the Earp brothers came together into Dodge City. And James, who walked to the limp because of wounds from the Civil War, became a deputy sheriff under sheriff Charlie Bassett of Ford County. Now, Wyatt became a deputy city marshal, and then Morgan also came to town, although he didn't seem to have any law enforcement job.

So Wyatt joins the police force, May 17, 1876. And by everyone's account, it was a very busy summer. And because of this busy summer, Wyatt built a great reputation as an officer. He proved to be, you know, skilled and well-known and well-liked all throughout Dodge City, and he became a close friend with a man named Bat Masterson, who had later begun. become the sheriff of this county. They formed a friendship that would last their entire lives. And though they thought alike, especially when it came to enforcing the law,

neither one depended heavily on their guns to keep order at all. So this made both BAT and Wyatt different from other famous lawmen of the time. They weren't just pulling their pistol out, just shooting at anyone. More often than not, he would hit someone over the head with his pistol instead of shooting them when they caused trouble. In this way, these saloon owners who paid him protection money would have customers who were literally still alive to come back. on future cattle drives.

You know, the bar owners and the prostitution houses, they didn't want to kill anyone, even if they were acting up and fighting. They just wanted them knocked out and taken out of town so they could come back in a year and keep spending money. So this law enforcement position was a job that only lasted during certain seasons when the Cowboys were actually going to town.

But when the Cowboys left town, there wasn't much work. So Wyatt and Morgan, looking for adventure and money, headed north to the Black Hills where a gold rush was happening. The two brothers, they traveled around, again playing cards in the Deadwood, and then spent some time in Fort Worth. But in 1878, they were back in Dodge for another cattle season. So it is in Dodge City, the Wyatt made some of his closest friendships, including his unusual friendship with this guy Doc Holiday.

This guy is a dentist who would eventually become a gambler and then a killer. So a little bit of background on Doc. He was born John Henry Holiday in Griffin, Georgia. This is a small town near Atlanta, and his mother died, when he was young and his father had married on. And Doc eventually went to dental school in Pennsylvania, specifically in Philly. And then after two years, he moved to Atlanta and started working as a dentist.

After that, he found out he had tuberculosis. This is like a severe lung disease. So we decided to leave Georgia and head west. He hoped that the weather and the dryness of the West and on the frontier would help his health. But being a dentist, you know, it was harder and harder for him to even do his job. And because of the tuberculosis

and maybe even just his attitude, he drove most of his patients away. So he turned to gambling to make money. He said he couldn't be a dentist because his patients didn't like having someone with tuberculosis coughing in their faces. And, you know, that kind of makes sense. But for Doc, things worked out

because he ended up being an excellent gambler. Now, Doc was notorious for having the most negative attitude ever. Like, he hated his life. He was pissed off. And so as a result, anytime you talk to him, he was just like angry and criminal. in argumentative and he drank a ton and he was like an angry drunk and he was probably one of the best friends that the Earps ever had just ironically like he was so curmudgeony but the Earps they found him charming and they liked him they thought he was smart and they thought he was a good gambler so they kept him around but Doc holiday ended up becoming one of their biggest weaknesses you see Doc had this crazy temper hated to be told what to do and he was difficult to get along with right nobody in this town liked Doc except the Earps he was like

likely to do things on his own without telling anyone his plans and would start fights, and he was just an absolute liability. But for Wyatt Earp, Dodge City was important for building relationships, and that he did, both with Doc, but he also met and lived with a woman named Celia Ann Blaylock. And though they were never officially married, she was seen with Wyatt everywhere that they went. Now, in 1879, Wyatt was apparently getting restless, and he wanted change. He had done a few seasons, In this cattle town, it was kind of getting bored. And he had done a good job as this police officer, but, you know, it was, it had run its course. But in early September 1879, he quit his job, and first he goes to Las Vegas, New Mexico, not Las Vegas, Nevada, a smaller town in New Mexico, still known for the same sort of, you know, cattle hustle.

And there he runs into Doc Holliday, who he had known way back in Dodge City. Now, Doc left with Wyatt and James in October, and they moved. moved to Prescott, Arizona, where their brother Virgil was sleeping. There, they decided to all move to Tombstone. You know, Tombstone, Arizona. Probably another from the Beatles song, right, David? What was the song? Jojo was a man.

Who thought he was in a... I think it's Tucson, but it should have been Tombstone. It's Tucson. Close enough. After James, Wyatt, and Virgil get settled, Morgan and their youngest brother Warren also came to join them in Tombstone, bringing the entire family together with Doc, all in one place. And in this booming Arizona Mining Town, the Earp name and Tombstone would be

connected forever. Now, to understand this place called Tombstone, whose name is, you know, extremely ominous and eerie, it started because of the silver discoveries that were made by a man named Ed Shefflin. Now, Shefflin really believed in this, you know, very remote area, even though southeastern Arizona was an incredibly dangerous place. You have, you know, just basically a desert to the climate's harsh, the land is rough, and there's also a ton of Apache Native Americans that are down to attack you if you get on their land. So Ed Shefflin was this prospector who wanted to go up into the hills and find silver. There was no town there at the time, nothing, literally just rocks, mountains, and angry Native Americans. And people told Shefflin that he wouldn't find

a mine there, that there's no silver. They said the only thing that he would find in those hills was his tombstone. So he named it tombstone mine, and the town grew from that. Ed Shefflin discovered a mountain of silver worth $85 million, like, just to put in perspective, like what these people were searching for. This is not like, oh, I found like a couple bucks here and there. If you were a guy like Ed Shefflin, you were crazy enough to go to a place where you would likely die, you could come across 85 mil. And this attracted people from all over the world.

Once news got out, you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds to the thousands of people descending on Tombstone, Arizona to get a piece of this precious silver. And people came from everywhere. And the Earp family moved to Tombstone because they saw the same opportunity. You know, it's growing, it's a wide open town, and they saw another chance to be the law enforcement that the town so desperately needed. Emergency broadcast. Guys, we have a brand new channel dropping. It is Mark Gagnon Comedy.

And we're going to be putting all my stand-up right there, as well as a new show we call You Ask for This. We pass out no cards to the audience, and they submit suggestions that then get put into a bucket. And then me and a friend, we will draw them out. and riff on them, whether it's a current event, or maybe a personal story that happened to someone in the audience, whatever it is, we get to the bottom of it. So, if you're interested in checking out the channel, you can click the link in the description.

Please subscribe. It really, really helps everything work, especially after the show comes out, checking out the episodes and supporting is massive. We really appreciate it. You can check it out there. It is You Ask for This is the name of the segment, and the channel is Mark Gagnall Comedy. We'll see you guys in the new spot. Thank you so much for always supporting.

We'll see you next time. Let's get back to the show. So when Virgil Earp arrived in Tombstone, he was already a United States deputy marshal. And he quickly got a job working for the city marshal, a gentleman named Fred White. But Fred White was soon killed by a cowboy, and White's death allowed John Klum to appoint Virgil as the new city marshal. So immediately, the Earp family is climbing the ranks in this brand new place. Now, Clum was the town's first elected mayor and the editor of one of the main newspapers, the Tombstone Epitaph. So along with Virgil's new job came basically a new office above the Crystal Palace Saloon.

Now, John Clum, the mayor of this town, had come to Tombstone after working as an Indian agent at the San Carlos Indian Reservation. Kloom was a very interesting character that was crazy in his own right. Not going to get too into it. But all you need to know, he's extremely confident and charismatic and bold. He was this young man with big plans and he got along really well with the Earps. and he became one of their biggest supporters in Tombstone. You can imagine that the mayor is going to be very grateful that there's, you know, these very competent and qualified Western folks that are there basically to uphold the law and preserve his town.

So through his newspaper, he promoted the idea that the Earps were strong and reliable and that everyone should listen to him. So why it was first convinced to come to Tombstone by a man named James Hume, and he is the head of the Wells Fargo detectives. He was offered a job as a shotgun guard, which, you know, as you can imagine, you're basically moving money and goods around. You basically need people that are going to guard these products, and you're basically private security for, you know, precious materials like gold and silver. But Wyatt found a better opportunity in law enforcement.

When Virgil was made the city marshal, John Clum made sure that Wyatt was appointed as deputy marshal. And while these two brothers are building the reputation as cops and law enforcement in this town, the other brother, James, found work as a bartender in Vogan's alley. Now, later that same year, one more Urb brother Morgan would join them in Tombstone. Morgan took over Wyatt's job as the shotgun guard, ironically. Now, most people went west not to create a completely new culture or whatever. They came west to kind of recreate the society that they left behind, but with one big difference.

They wanted to be the ones in charge. Everyone was leaving something that they, you know, generally liked. They just wanted to move off the ladder. So Virgil and Wyatt established themselves as these very important people in Tombstone. Now, most people, especially, you know, the criminals in this town, were afraid of Virgil. They saw this guy who was fierce and intimidating and also incorruptible. And when Virgil arrived, you could basically carry a gun anywhere you wanted to in Tombstone. It was fully open carry.

And he got the city council to pass a law that said you couldn't carry guns anymore. Basically, you could bring guns into town, but you had to leave them somewhere safe within a reasonable amount of time. Now, what makes this place Tombstone so fascinating is that in the time that the Earps are getting there, there are different groups that are all in the town that all hate each other. You have the miners, and then you have the gamblers, and then you have the cowboys, and then you just have the regular towns people that are running shops, and each group wanted different things for the towns, and by the time that the Earps get there and actually take their job as the cops of the town, the entire place is split, and there's all this infighting, and the law officers are stead center

in all of it. So the cowboys are wild, and they're loud, and they, you know, bring a lot of excitement in a tombstone, but they also bring a ton of truiting. But they also bring a ton of trouble. And some people in town actually kind of liked having Cowboys because, you know, they sort of made things interesting and, you know, brought, you know, fresh entertainment into the area. Other people wanted them gone because they would just fight and get drunk and, you know, hook up with prostitutes. And it was an issue. And this disagreement put the Earps in a tough spot. Wyatt got tired of, you know, just being this deputy marshal. He wanted more power and wanted to climb the political ranks. So he decided to run for sheriff. Another man named Johnny

Behan was also running for the same job. And Behan came up. with a plan. He told Wyatt that if he dropped out of the race, that he would make him the undersheriff when he won. Then, at the next election, Behan promised to step aside and let Wyatt become sheriff. Wyatt thought this sounded pretty fair, so he agreed to the deal. The only issue is that Johnny Behan lied. When Behan became sheriff, he gave the undersheriff job to a guy named Harry Woods instead of Wyatt. Now, Woods was a Democrat just like Behan, and Wyatt felt completely betrayed and tricked, and he was angry and was trying to find a way to get back at Behan. The two men were already enemies because of politics, but then something happened that made things even worse.

Behan starts dating a young actress named Josephine Marcus. She figured that this Johnny Behan guy could introduce her to someone more important, potentially a man named Wyatt Earp. Now, at the time, Wyatt is living with a woman named Maddie Blaylock, and when Josephine shows up, Maddie gets jealous right away. And it didn't take long before Wyatt left Maddie for Josephine. So he literally leaves his girl that he's been with for the longest time, gets with Josephine that gets introduced to him by his arch rival. Now, Johnny B. Han hated Wyatt Ard for two reasons. First of their political fight over the sheriff's job. And then secondly, because Wyatt had stolen his girl. I mean, 1800s drama is just fire, right? I mean, this feels like Big Brother. This is sick as hell.

Now, the last draw of this entire saga comes on September 8, 1881. Someone robs a stagecoach that goes between towns, stealing about $2,500. And even worse, two stagecoach workers are killed during the robbery. After the stagecoach was robbed, Wyatt Earp and Fred Dodge put together a group of men to hunt down the robbers. They formed what was called a posse and went after the criminals. They managed to catch two of the robbers, a guy named Peter Spence and Frank Stillwell. Here is where things get complicated. Stillwell wasn't just any old criminal.

He was actually a deputy sheriff who worked under sheriff Johnny Behan. Now this creates a massive problem. As you can see, the Earps and the other law enforcement officers in Tombstone are completely floored by this. How could they trust each other when one of their own deputies was robbing stagecoaches? This arrest would start a chain of events that would lead to one of the most famous gunfights in all of American history. Now, at the time, nobody knew that the Earps were about to become, you know, these legendary figures in the Wild West. But of course, as we know through history, this is exactly what happens. So after the stagecoach robbery, the Earps had even bigger problems with a group literally called the Cowboys.

This was a gang made up of mostly men who, you know, would steal cattle from Mexico and then sell them in the United States for profit. Now, the Clanton gang was one of the biggest cattle stealing operations around. And this gang was run by Amand, who was known to the... the townspeople as Old Man Clanton. And this included his three sons, Finn, Ike, and Billy. Other members were Frank Stilwell, Peter Spence, Johnny Ringo, Joe Hill, and several other outlaws. Now, here's how their business worked. They would steal cattle down in Mexico and then bring them north to sell in Arizona. Then they would turn around, steal cattle in Arizona, and bring them south to sell in Mexico. Now, it's a pretty clever plan, right? Because you're making money both ways.

And all you've got to do is just, you know, take the product, sell it, steal someone else's product, to take it down, sell it there, and you're just making money from everyone, but also screwing everyone over. Now, old man Clanton was the leader of this cattle raid in Mexico, and he would take his men across the border, steal the livestock, and take it back. But eventually, his luck runs out. On what turned out to be his last raid, the Mexicans caught up with him and killed him down in Mexico.

And even though their leader was dead, this cowboy cattle gang kept on going. So on October 25th, 1881, the Clanton brothers and their friends, the McClanton brothers and their friends, the McGlory brothers, rode into Tombstone. And there, they're planning to spend the night gambling and drinking in the town's saloons. Now, the fight that would make the Earp's famous started the night before the shootout. On October 25th, Ike Clanton gets into an argument with Morgan Earp and Doc Holiday. They exchange threats and, you know, words and basically just jod each other. And even so, Ike spends most of the night gambling with Virgil Earp and Sheriff Johnny Behan. When this is when the card game ended,

was still angry and upset. The next morning, October 26th, Ike Clanton was walking around with a gun, making some threats, and he was telling anyone who would listen that he was going to kill some of the Earp brothers. When Virgil Earp hears about this, he got his brother Morgan and went looking for Ike. They found Ike Clanton on 4th Street, waving around a massive Winchester rifle. Virgil walked up behind him, hit him over the head with a gun in his typical move and dragged him off to jail. The judge fined Ike Clanton. and $25 and let him go. As they're leaving the courthouse, Tom McClory

made the mistake of saying something smart to Wyatt Earp. Wyatt slapped him with one hand, pulled out his gun, and hit Tom over the head with it, and he left Tom lying in the street. Now you've got all these cowboys who are pissed off. They haven't slept at all that night. They're drinking, they're playing cards,

and now they've just been slapped, humiliated, hitting the head with guns, thrown in jail, and now they're back on the streets. They're also scared, but they're also at this point too proud to actually back down. And so they kept on threading the Earps. But deep down, they were hoping that things were just kind of blow over, but they couldn't stand the humiliation.

The Cowboys saw the Earps and Doc Holliday as a serious problem that needed to get dealt with, right? So looking for a place to figure out what to do next, they gathered in an empty lot behind the OK corral. This is a lot right next to a photography studio where Doc Holliday was actually living. Virgil Earp decided that, he had enough. He was going to go down to the empty lot and confront the Cowboys face to face.

So he got his brothers, Wyatt, Morgan, and Doc Holliday and made them all temporary deputies so that they could go with him. This is a thing you could do back in the day. You could literally walk up to a guy and be like, congrats, partner, you're a cop now. So he takes all his brothers, takes Doc, says, hey, we're going down. According to Wyatt Earp's own personal testimony, he says, when we turned the corner of Fourth and Fremont, we could see them. We had walked a few steps further when I saw Behan leaving the party and come towards us. When I and Morgan came up to Behan, he said, I have disarmed them. When he said this, I took my pistol, which I had in my hand under my coat, and put it in my overcoat pocket. So, Sheriff Behan is already on the scene, and he's trying to

stop a fight from happening, right? This is his job. But the Earps just pushed past him and kept on walking towards the Cowboys. When they finally faced each other, the two groups were almost close enough to touch. I mean, they're, you know, a couple inches away. they could have just leaned over and just kissed each other if they wanted to. I would have been, I mean,

would have absolutely diffused the entire situation if Y, just walked over to what? That's not what they did. They just stared off at each other and it wasn't a long distance

shootout either. These men were literally standing within an arm's reach. So this is when Wyatt walked up to the Cowboys. He points his finger at them right in their faces and says,

you sons of bitches have been looking for a fight and now we're going to give it to you. At the same time, Virgil shouted, you men put your hands up, you're under arrest. But then Virgil quickly said, hold on. Reverse card didn't mean that.

He wasn't talking to the Cowboys when he said this. He had heard Doc Holliday getting ready to fire his shotgun. He was trying to stop Doc, but it was too late. Doc Holliday fires the first shot. Hits Billy Clanton rein the chest. Frank McClory starts to pull out his gun. But why it was faster and shot him in the stomach, Billy Claiborne and Ikelanton ran away to find cover.

This fight explodes, or for the next 30 seconds, guns are blazed from both sides. When the smoke clears, the shooting stops. Tom and Franklin Cleary are dead. Billy Clanton lays beside them badly wounded and dying. Right after the shootout, Sheriff Behan tried to arrest the Earps on the spot, like, yo, you just killed these guys. He claimed that they had gunned down these unarmed, helpless cowboys that were trying to run away. But this didn't really make much sense. Like, if the Cowboys had no weapons, then how did Morgan and Virgil Earp get shot?

Wyatt Earp just basically ignored Behan completely and walked away. The town's reaction was split down the middle, and just like it has always been. The local newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph, completely supported the Earps and defended everything they did, just as the newspaper always had. According to the Tombstone Epitaph, it said, Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession. As cool as a cucumber, it was not hit. Doc Holliday was as calm as if the target practice was happening and fired rapidly. people often say there are, you know, two different stories about what happened in the shootout. The truth is there were probably about two dozen different versions. I mean, everyone that

saw this thing had a different take on actually what went down. Witnesses from Oliver Town gave their testimony and every single story was different. According to the Cowboys side, they were just, you know, trying to give up when the shooting started. They claimed that Billy Clanton was saying, look, I don't want to fight. And then the herbs opened fired on him in cold blood and just took their lives. And the Cowboys got a massive funeral. their funeral was so massive that even in another newspaper in Tombstone, it said that the funerals of Billy Clanton and

Thomas and Frank McClory were the largest funerals ever witnessed in Tombstone and that the bodies of these three men were neatly and tastefully dressed and placed in handsome caskets with silver trimmings. The noon shootout became massive news and words spread quickly to other cities and newspapers all gave their own

bloody details. Suddenly the Earp brothers weren't just lawmen from small cattle towns anymore. They were famous gunfighters known across the entire country. And even though they were famous, charges were still filed against them. Wyatt had to go to court and answer for the shooting. The judge was a man named Wells Spicer, who happened to be a close personal friend of Wyatt's. That's convenient. Ike Clanton was the main witness trying to prove that the Earps were actually guilty, and while Wyatt was the main

witness trying to defend himself. And the trial went on for a whole month. And you can almost say this was like the first celebrity trial. I know a lot of people are like, oh, the OJ trial, this was a trial that absolutely gripped the nation and newspapers were reporting it all over the place. 26 witnesses testified. 12 supported the prosecution trying to convict the Earps and 14 supported the defense. In his final decision, Judge Spicer criticized Virgil for making his brothers and Doc Holiday into deputies and he didn't like the bad blood between the groups, but he still found the Earp brothers not guilty.

Spicer ruled that the killings were justified. He said that the officers were just doing their jobs, but the Clanton gang wasn't done yet. The cowboy faction accepts the verdict with bad grace. The smoldering fire exists, which is liable to break forth at any moment. It is well known that several prominent residents of Tombstone have been marked for death by the rustlers. Now, this was a dispatch by the Cowboys from Tombstone in December of 1881. So even though the Earps and Doc Holliday had been found not guilty,

the violence was far from over. On the night of December 28, 1881, Virgil left the Oriental Saloon, where Wyatt was gambling and walked across the street to another bar called the Crystal Palace. As he got close to the front door, three men with shotguns stood up on the roof of the building across Allen Street and fired at him five times. One blast hit him in the elbow, another, you know, destroyed the joint completely, and 19 pieces of buckshot went into his back. Virgil Earp actually lived through the attack, but from that day on, you could never use his left hand ever again. and his days as an effective cop or law enforcement officer were basically done. A few months after Virgil was wounded, another terrible thing happens to the Earp brothers.

They were playing pool at Hatchez Saloon when tragedy strikes. Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, and two or three other men were in the back room playing billiards. As Morgan bent over to take a shot, someone fired a gun from the alley outside. The bullet went through the window, hit Morgan in the back, and tore up his insides, and he died within minutes. This murder pushed Wyatt Earp completely over the edge. He decided to take revenge into his own hands. When Morgan was shot from through this window, Wyatt was right there and saw everything that happened.

And from that moment, he stopped caring about the law. He didn't give a shit anymore. And this period of incredible violence began, and Wyatt Earp became the cold-blooded killer. Wyatt sent Virgil, the Earp woman and Morgan's body, back to Colton, California, where his parents lived. Then, with Doc Holliday and his brother Warren, he began what he called a vendetta ride.

This was a mission to kill everyone he blamed for his brother's death. One of the first people he went after was Frank Stillwell. Wyatt trapped him in a railroad yard and shot him so many times that people said, you could have sold Stillwell for scrap metal. Next, they found a man named Florentino Cruz, who was known amongst the town as Indian Charlie, and he was in the countryside near Tombstone and shot him down. Soon after, they came across Curly Billy Brocious,

and a group of cowboys in the gunfight that followed, Wyatt killed Curly Bill. But now law enforcement groups were searching everywhere for Wyatt and his men, these former law enforcement officers that have now gone into, you know, renegade vigilante killers, and a coroner's jury officially named Wyatt and Warren Earp, plus Doc Holliday and several others as the men responsible for killing Stillwell. A judge issued arrest warrants for all of them, and the group ran away to New Mexico and then finally headed north to Colorado.

In Colorado, Arizona authorities tried to get Doc Holliday sent back to face trial. But Wyatt's good friend, Bat Masterson, stopped this from happening. Masterson asked the governor of Colorado to prevent Holiday from getting sent back to Arizona. Masterson, for the record, didn't really like Holiday, who, you know, he thought he was a psycho killer. But Holiday was Wyatt Earp's friend, and that was good enough for Bat. So while his brothers, James and Virgil, had moved to other parts of the West, Wyatt stayed in Colorado and just trying to to lay low and kind of wait things out. But by 1883, he found himself back in Dodge City. The Kansas cattle towns were starting to become more respectable places with more established

industry, and city leaders decided the next step in cleaning up their communities, and they thought a good place to start was to ban gambling. Now, one of the most successful gambling house owners in Dodge was Wyatt's old friend, a man named Luke Short. In 1883, Luke Short was making good money from gambling in Dodge City when the city leaders decided to shut him down. And that's when Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bessett, and Batmasterson came to town. And they were pissed off. This group became known as the Dodge City Peace Commission. And they came to help out their old friend Luke.

Wyatt and his friends intimidated the town officials into leaving Luke alone. And soon after that, Wyatt hit the road again, this time with Josie at his side. He traveled around West, opening saloons in different cities, but all these businesses failed pretty quickly. Wyatt was still looking for adventure and saw a chance to get back in the spotlight when he was asked to referee a boxing match. This was a heavyweight bout between Bob Fitzsimmons and Jack Sharkey. The winner would go on to fight a gentleman named Jim Corbett, who was the heavyweight champion of the world. Wyatt caused quite a stir when he took off his coat to step into the ring as a referee, and everyone could see that he was carrying a gun.

When people asked him about it, he was like, you know, this is so much a part of me. like my gun is basically like my arm that I didn't even notice it anymore. He had to pay a fine later for carrying a weapon in public, literally inside of a boxing ring. But this fight became very controversial. Fitzsimmons had Sharkey back against the ropes. It was beating him so badly, but Earp called a foul on Fitzsimmons and Sharkey won the fight. A lot of people lost money betting on this match and a lot of people said that the fight was fixed, but that wasn't true. Wyatt Earp had too good reputation as a fair sportsman.

to be involved in rigging a championship fight. That would be the last fight he would referee. And for the next nine years, Wyatt and his girlfriend, Josie, wandered restlessly around the country before they finally settled in Los Angeles, California. It was there that he would, you know, build up his legend. In Los Angeles, he found a group of old cowboys from the Southwest who were working as horse riders and stunned performers for this new bubbling movie industry. And he started spending time hanging around movie sets and became close friends with famous actors,

S. Hart and Tom Mix. Wyatt had lived this crazy, fascinating life on both sides of the law and felt that he had a pretty interesting story that people might want to hear. But even his friend William S. Hart couldn't convince the movie studios to make a film about Wyatt's adventures. By the mid-1920s, Doc Holliday, Virgil, and James had all passed away. Wyatt watched as his chances of becoming this famous outlaw slash cop during his lifetime slowly disappeared. And in 1929,

Wyatt Earp died at the age of 81. And it wasn't until after his death that the world would finally recognize him as one of the last great frontier lawman. Now, we have to give Wyatt Earp some credit as a very good lawman who kind of got caught up with some stuff and, you know,

vengeance against the people that he cared about along with everyone else. And a set of situations that were, you know, bigger than he could control. But we can also remember Wyatt Earp as one of those people who turned myths into reality. His story has, you know, stagecoach robberies and gunfights and love triangles and it has all the pieces of what would make up like the most insane Wild West story ever. Wyatt was just one of a group of men who proved that working together and, you know, having this adventurous spirit could shape the history of the West. And the Earp brothers will be remembered for living through and dealing with a very complicated time in history.

They will also be remembered as men who, you know, maybe made some questionable choices, getting vengeance and taking the law into their own hands. And it was ultimately Wyatt Earp's later years living in Los Angeles that cemented him into Western cinema's Hall of Fame. I mean, he is one of the most filmed Western figures ever. I mean, my darling Clementine, directed by John Ford, Henry Fonda actually plays Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp is then played by Bert Lancaster.

Kurt Douglas is Doc Holliday in the famous gunfight at the OK Corral. The film Tombstone, Kurt Russell, plays Wyatt and Val Kilmer plays Doc Holliday. And Wyatt Earp is, you know, a Kevin Costner film where he stars as Wyatt. He's one of the most documented and fascinating figures in all of Western history. And absolutely just, you know, influenced, you could say, the Western genre as we know it today. And this man, I mean, truly, maybe more than anyone else, has lived one of the most fascinating lives of, you know, any Western cowboy slash lawmen slash outlaw of anyone that I've ever read. I mean, it must have been just such an insane time living out in the West and you

could just do anything you wanted. You just had a bunch of people all looking for opportunity, all willing to do whatever it took to get famous, get money, get women. And there was kind of no one to protect you. So you had to protect yourself. I mean, just an insane life. I'll be honest, stressful. I don't think I would make a good cowboy. If I had to be out there and actually be just like running around and everyone's like, dude, this guy stole for me, you got to back me up. I'm like, no. Yeah, man, I don't think, I don't think I have what it takes to be a cowboy. I don't think I could do it. Right? Like, just like my buddy's like, dude, you got to go fight this guy and be like, nah, I'm good. I don't, we don't need to go out there and, and what,

for what? Because you got money stolen? Oh, because you're my brother. Oh, you got shot. in the back of the head playing pool. Now I gotta go avenge your death and kill 20 people on the ride. Part of me's like maybe he wasn't such a good guy. Maybe he was kind of a piece of shit? I don't know. It sounds like he went to this place,

found these guys, tried to cause trouble, and then killed him. I don't know. Call me crazy. It just sounds like cops, the state, is just using their authority to go kill people that they have personal vendettas with. I don't know.

I'm not, look, respect to the troops, respect to the cops, but in this case, it sounded like they wanted action. What do you guys think? You tell me, I mean, did Wyatt instigate something and cause a problem for himself and then, you know,

going on this vigilante tirade because someone got their get back? This is just white people gang violence, right? This is this, I bet you, like, the Republicans on, like, Rush Limbaugh of the 1880s was like, these cowboys and their culture and their music, oh, and their pants. And they're just, we got their pants all high with a belt.

I mean, it's just, ugh. What is wrong? We need a better culture. We need just a refined, you know, colonial Boston culture, these Western cowboys. I'm almost 100% sure. That's what happened. Which I've, this actually goes along with my theory perfectly that I feel like modern day rappers are the cowboys of today.

Like, remember Tay K? Now we're talking. Okay. He's doing the dash, right? He's literally rapping in front of a wanted poster of his face. You can't tell me that that's not literally a scene out of a Western movie. I'm not going to accept that. You're telling me this guy's rapping.

Fuck a beat. I was trying to beat a case. And he's in front of his literal poster of his face. Wanted a billion dollars. Terrius Keith or what was his name? Take it. I don't know. Sure.

Whatever. So look, I think this is actually a good place where people can kind of come together. You can look at gang violence in America. Hey, it's not great. We shouldn't support it. Sure. Look, does the music glorify violence? Perhaps.

I'm not even going to dispute that. What I am saying, it's the same as Cowboys. We've glorified Cowboys just because it was long ago. I'm willing to bet give it 100 years. People are going to be looking back on, you know, gang violence and O'block and be like, look at these guys. The Wyatt Earp of that time. Take hay. Anyway, drop a comment.

Let me know what you think. As always, this has been an episode of History Camp, and I will see you in the future to talk about the past. Peace be with you. Imagine this. You're 30 feet underground digging through frozen earth with spoons and mess hall plates. Nazi guards patrol overhead. One wrong move, one loose pebble, and it's over.

But on this night in 1944, 76 allied prisoners would attempt the impossible, tunneling their way to freedom in the largest prisoner of war escape of World War II. And centuries earlier, in a cold stone chamber, a teenage girl in armor stood before her accusers. Her crime? leading armies speaking to angels and daring to challenge the most powerful men in Europe. Joan of Arc's trial would become one of history's most infamous moments. These are just two stories from today and history,

the newsletter that brings you the most fascinating events from the past delivered fresh to your inbox. From epic wars to religious rebellions, ancient mysteries to modern marvels, don't miss another piece of history. Scan the QR code now or click the link in the description to sign up for today in history.