Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Gunfight at the OK Corral

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

On October 26, 1881, one of the most defining moments in the history of the American west took place.  That shootout between nine men defined the popular perception of what the old west was about, even though it was actually a very atypical event.  Since then, the gunfight has become legendary, having been the subject of songs, books, and movies. Learn more about the Gunfight at the OK Corral, the most famous shootout in the wild west, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 26, 1881, one of the most defining moments in the history of the American West took place. A shootout between nine men defined the popular perception of what the Old West was about, even though it was actually a very atypical event. And since then, this gunfight has become legendary, having been the subject of songs, books, and movies. Learn more about the gunfight at the OK Corral, the most famous shootout in the Wild West, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The gunfight at the OK Corral is one of the best known incidents from the Wild West. yet it's still one that is grossly misunderstood. The depictions of it, which can often be seen in movies, usually portray it as a story of good guys versus bad guys. Moreover, because it's one of the only actual cases of a large-scale midday shootout in the West,

it's been extrapolated to a great many fictional westerns. But let's get into the details of the story. The event took place in the town of Tombstone, Arizona, and the name Tombstone probably adds to the mythos of the story. Tombstone is located only about 30 miles north of the Mexican border, and it was founded in 1879 when silver was discovered in the area. However, the town grew rapidly, going from nothing in 1879 to a population of 7,000 by 1881. It was one of the last boom towns of the era, and at the time it was the largest boom town in the southwest United States. Tombstone was overwhelmingly populated with men who were looking to make their fortune,

While the town had a few banks and churches, a school, and even an ice cream parlor, it had 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, and dozens of brothels. Crime was high as cattle rustlers and bandits came to town, and it became a center for smuggling alcohol and tobacco into Mexico. So, just to summarize, Tombstone was a rapidly growing town, with lots of men, lots of booze, and a fair amount of crime. Into this environment in 1879 came the Earp Brothers. James, Virgil, and Wyatt.

The Earps are often portrayed as the good guys in this story. However, Wyatt Earp was actually a fugitive from the law when he arrived in Tombstone. He was arrested for stealing a horse and then escaped from jail. When they arrived in Tombstone, they got jobs in law enforcement. Virgil was hired as the deputy marshal for Pima County and was stationed in Tombstone. Wyatt was previously an assistant marshal in Dodd City, Kansas, where he first met a gambler and dentist by the name of John Henry Doc Holliday. Here I should note that of the people involved in the gunfight, Doc Holliday was probably the one person who could truly be called a gunslinger.

He was reported to have been in nine gunfights and was confirmed to have killed three men. The Earps invested in silver mines and water rights and gambled a lot. The other brothers, Warren and Morgan, moved to Tombstone in 1880, as did Wyatt's friend Doc Holliday. On the other side of this feud was a group known as the Cowboys, which were basically a gang. The members of this gang, as it pertains to this story, were the brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaughey, and Billy Claiborne. The cowboys were involved in cattle rustling, horse thievery, and actual ranching. There was a legitimate conflict between the cowboys and the rural people of the county and the interests of the business people in Tombstone. The cowboys were aligned with the rural people and the Earp brothers were aligned with the business owners of Tombstone.

The start of the conflict between the Earps and the Cowboys began in July of 1880. when a U.S. Army officer asked for the assistance of Virgil Earp to help track down the thieves who took several army mules. The primary suspects were the cowboys, who in fact were found to have the mules in question. In March of 1881, another incident occurred, which brought the two sides into conflict. A stagecoach carrying the equivalent of $750,000 in today's value, was robbed by masked bandits, and the driver and a passenger of the stagecoach were killed. Virgil Earp, who was a deputy U.S. Marshal, along with his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, who were temporarily deputized, spent weeks trying to hunt down the culprits. Wyatt eventually made a deal with Ike Clanton of the Cowboys that he would give Clanton the reward money if he turned in the cowboys who were responsible for the robbery and the murders. What Wyatt wanted out of the deal was credit so he could win the upcoming sheriff's selection.

The three suspects were eventually killed in unrelated incidents, and Ike began to worry that his turning on the Cowboys boys would become exposed. So he began to publicly blame the Earps and Doc Holliday for the robbery and the murders. Things between the Earps and the Cowboys only got worse over the rest of 1881, and it got particularly bad between Clanton and Doc Holiday. There were several threats exchanged between the two groups, including explicit threats of violence. Things came to ahead on October 25, 1881. I. Clanton and Tom McLeary came to Tombstone to get some supplies. The proximate cause of the fight was a ban on firearms being brought into the city.

Wyatt Earp had instituted the ban as a way to reduce violence in Tombstone. The Earps confronted Ike Clanton and Tom McLaughey to disarm them and then ended up pistol-whipping them. The cowboys were furious. Ike drank well into the night and into next morning and didn't actually get any sleep. The next day, on October 26th, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaughery, and Billy Claiborne came to town. At a saloon in town around 1.30 p.m. they ran into Doc Holiday. who informed them of their brothers having been pistol-wipped the day before. This made the Cowboys furious, and they vowed to get revenge.

Ike had gone to a livery on the edge of town to get his rifle, which he had to store there, and soon Doc Holliday was informed that Ike had his gun and was looking for him. The Earps and Doc Holliday found the Cowboys in an alley next to the CS Flies photography studio and boarding house, where Holiday was staying. Here is the first big misconception about the fight. It did not take place at the OKC, corral. The corral, by the way, was abbreviated OK, which stood for Old Kindersly. The OK corral was actually a few buildings away on the same block. It was probably used as the name simply

because the gunfight at the CS Fly Photography Studio doesn't really roll off the tongue quite as well. There were five cowboys in the alley, Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaughey and Billy Claiborne. And there were four on the Earp side, Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp, as well as Doc Holliday. The two groups confronted each other at about 3 p.m. What exactly transpired isn't known. No one is sure who fired first. But what is known is that the entire fight took place in only 30 seconds. During that time, about 30 shots were fired by both sides.

And they were probably very close to each other, perhaps only 6 to 10 feet or 2 to 3 meters away from each other. By all accounts, the Earps didn't go there looking for a fight, but only to disarm the Cowboys. What we do know is the results of the fight. Tom McLaughey, Frank McLaughey, and Billy Clanton were killed. Billy was shot three times, including the chest and abdomen. Tom McLeary was shot in the chest with a shotgun by Doc Holliday,

and Frank McLeary was shot in the stomach by Wyatt Earp. Virgil Earp had been shot in the calf, Morgan Earp was struck in both shoulder blades, and Doc Holliday had a minor wound near his hip. Wyatt Earp was unhurt. Ike Latton and Billy Claiborne both managed to escape. The aftermath of the gunfight was perhaps more interesting than the fight itself. As I stated in the beginning, there weren't clear good and bad guys.

Yeah, the cowboys weren't the best of people, but they also had support amongst some of the town people of Tombstone, and likewise, the Earps weren't that popular in the same circles. Immediately after the fight, the three dead men were displayed in the window of the town undertaker, with a sign that said, murdered in the streets of Tombstone. The funeral procession for the three men had 200 people walking with the caskets and another 2,000 people lining the streets. The Earps and Doc Holliday were arrested for murder four days after the shootings. After an extensive month-long investigation, the Justice of the Peace in Tombstone, Wells Spicer, cleared the three Earps and Doc Holliday of all charges. Two of the survivors, Billy Claiborne and Morgan Earp, were both murdered within a year.

In 1887, Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis, and Ike Lantin was shot by a Pinkerton detective who was sent to track him down. Virgil Erp died in 1905 from pneumonia after complications from a mind collapse that he was involved in. And Wyatt Earp outlived everyone. And he is the reason why our view of the OK Corral gunfight is the way it is. He lived 24 years after his brother Virgil died, which means that the story of the fight was basically told through him.

Wyatt Earp traveled to the Yukon for the Klondike Gold Rush, he owned several taverns, and he was also a boxing referee. Wyatt Earp was the referee in one of the most controversial boxing matches of the era, the World Heavyweight Championship between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey in 1896. In the match, Fitzsimmons knocked Sharkey to the mat, but Earp said that Fitzsimmons hit Sharkey with a low blow and awarded the match to Sharkey. Many people thought that the bout was fixed, given that hardly anyone else saw the below-the-belt punch. He also just happened to be in Los Angeles when the motion picture industry started to take off.

He became a consultant for Western movies and got to know movie stars such as Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin, as well as directors like John Ford. White Earp did interviews, and his account of the gunfight became the version that history remembered, with, of course, White Earp as the primary hero of the story. Earp died in 1929 at the age of 80, and his wife Josephine died in 1944, keeping the story of White Earp and his version of the events that took place alive. At the time of his death, he was actually probably better known for his role in the Fitzsimmons Sharkey fight than he was for the gunfight at the OK Corral.

The gunfight at the OK Corral has been the subject of several books and movies, most famously the 1957 movie of the same name, and the 1993 movie Tombstone. The gunfight at the OK Corral. Corral, or more accurately the gunfight at the CS Fly Photography Studio, was actually one of the few gunfights of its type, which took place in the Wild West. Yet, despite being a staple of Western films, those type of gunfights rarely ever happened. Yes, there was crime and there were shootings, but they mostly were drunken or cowardly murders, not gunslingers, fighting in the middle of the

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