Wyatt Earp

Looking east from D St. toward 3rd St. in downtown San Bernardino in 1864.

On May 12, 1864, Nicholas Earp organized a wagon train and headed to San Bernardino, California, arriving on December 17.[19][20] By late summer 1865, Virgil found work as a driver for Phineas Banning's stage coach line in California's Imperial Valley, and 16-year-old Wyatt assisted. In spring 1866, Wyatt became a teamster transporting cargo for Chris Taylor. From 1866-68, he drove cargo over 720 miles (1,160 km) wagon road from Wilmington through San Bernardino, then Las Vegas, Nevada, to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.[21][22]

In spring 1868, Earp was hired to transport supplies needed to build the Union Pacific Railroad. He learned gambling and boxing while working on the rail head in the Wyoming Territory.[23] He developed a reputation officiating boxing matches[24] and refereed a fight between John Shanssey and Prof. Mike Donovan[25] on July 4, 1869, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in front of 3,000 spectators.[26]

Wyatt Earp, age 21[27] in 1869 or 1870, while married to Urilla Sutherland; taken in Lamar, Missouri.

In spring of 1868, the Earps moved east again to Lamar, Missouri, where Wyatt's father Nicholas became the local constable. Wyatt rejoined the family the next year. Nicholas resigned as constable on November 17, 1869, to become the Justice of the Peace. Wyatt was appointed constable in his place.[28][27]

Wyatt Earp and his brother Virgil visited family in Monmouth, Illinois. Afterward, Virgil went to Missouri and Wyatt went to Beardstown, Illinois, 70 miles (110 km) south where he spent the summer of 1869. Beardstown was undergoing a boom thanks to a rail line being laid through town.[29]

During mid 1869 In Beardstown, Illinois, a railroad brakeman named Tom Piner mocked Wyatt, calling him "the California boy", a euphemism for coward, implying that Wyatt had gone to California to avoid serving in the Civil War. Although Wyatt had attempted to join the army, he'd been stopped by his father, and he took offense at Piner's remarks.[30]^: 209 They fought and Wyatt tossed Piner outside. Piner drew his gun, and Wyatt armed himself. The two men exchanged shots, leaving Piner wounded in the hip.[31]

Urilla Sutherland, who married Earp on January 10, 1870.

In late 1869, Earp courted 20 year-old Urilla Sutherland (c. 1849–70), daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland who operated the Exchange Hotel in Lamar.[32] They were married by Earp's father on January 10, 1870.[27] Wyatt bought a lot on the outskirts of town for $50 where he built a house in August 1870. Urilla was about to deliver their first child when she suddenly died from typhoid fever.[23] In November, Earp sold the lot and house for $75. He ran against his elder half-brother Newton for the office of constable and won by 137 votes to Newton's 108, but their father lost the election for Justice of the Peace in a very close four-way race.[27][33]

Lamar, Missouri, subpoena signed by Constable Wyatt Earp, February 28, 1870.

Earp went through a downward spiral after Urilla's death, and he had a series of legal problems. On March 14, 1871, Barton County, Missouri, filed a lawsuit against him and his sureties. He was in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar which funded local schools, and he was accused of failing to turn them in. On March 31, James Cromwell filed a lawsuit against him alleging that he had falsified court documents concerning the amount of money that Earp had collected from Cromwell to satisfy a judgment. The court seized Cromwell's mowing machine and sold it for $38 to make up the difference between what Earp turned in and what Cromwell owed. Cromwell's suit claimed that Earp owed him $75, est. value of the machine.[34]

Earp, Edward Kennedy, and John Shown were charged with stealing two horses on March 28, 1871, from William Keys while in the Indian country, "each of the value of $100". On April 6, Deputy U.S. Marshal J. G. Owens arrested Earp for the horse theft, and Commissioner James Churchill arraigned him on April 14 and set bail at $500. On May 15, an indictment was issued against Earp, Kennedy, and Shown. John Shown's wife Anna claimed that Earp and Kennedy got her husband drunk and then threatened his life to persuade him to help. On June 5, Kennedy was acquitted while the case remained against Earp and Shown. Earp did not wait for the trial but climbed out through the roof of his jail and headed for Peoria, Illinois.[23]

Earp was listed in the Peoria city directory during 1872 as a resident in the home of Jane Haspel at Washington Street near the corner of Hamilton, although Stuart N. Lake took notes of a conversation with Earp years later in which Earp claimed that he'd been hunting buffalo during the winter of 1871–72.[35] Peoria police raided Haspel's home on February 24, 1872 and arrested four women, Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and George Randall. The men were charged with "keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame,"[36] and later fined $20 and court costs. Both Earps were arrested for the same crime again on May 11.[37] "Wyat [sic] Earp and his brother Morgan Earp were each fined $44.55 and as they had not the money and would not work, they languish in the cold and silent calaboose…" The size of the fines may indicate that the judge considered them to be pimps and not merely customers.[31] In Root’s Peoria City Directory for 1872-73, Wyatt Earp is living at the same address as Jane Haspel. The city directory was published on March 1, 1872, indicating that Wyatt was residing in the Haspel home and brothel, not merely patronizing it, at the time of his arrest.[31]

On their sister Adelia's eleventh birthday, June 16, 1872, the two men visited her in the family home in Lamar, Missouri. The Peoria Daily National Democrat reported that Earp had been arrested once more on September 10, 1872, and this time he was on a floating brothel named the Beardstown Gunboat owned by John T. Walton.[31] A prostitute named Sally Heckell was arrested with him, and she called herself his wife; she was likely the 16 year-old daughter of Jane Haspel.[3]

Some of the women are said to be good looking, but all appear to be terribly depraved. John Walton, the skipper of the boat and Wyatt Earp, the Peoria Bummer, were each fined $43.15. Sarah Earp, alias Sally Heckell, calls herself the wife of Wyatt Earp.[38]^: 11

By calling Earp the "Peoria Bummer," the newspaper was putting him in a class of "contemptible loafers who impose on hard-working citizens,"[39] a "beggar"[3] and worse than tramps. They were men of poor character who were chronic lawbreakers,[40] and Peoria constables probably considered him to be a pimp.[41][42][43] Earp wrote Lake many years later that he "arrived in Wichita direct from my buffalo hunt in '74", so he may have hunted buffalo between 1873 and 1874, although there's no evidence that he ever did so.[38]^: 13[37]

In early 1874, Earp and Sally moved to the growing cow town of Wichita where his brother James ran a brothel.[23] Local arrest records show that Sally and James's wife Nellie "Bessie" Ketchum operated a brothel there from early 1874 to the middle of 1876.[3] Wyatt may have been a pimp, but historian Gary L. Roberts believes that he was more likely an enforcer or a bouncer for the brothel.[23] When the Kansas state census was completed in June 1875, Sally was no longer living with Wyatt, James, and Bessie.[38]

Wichita was a railroad terminal and a destination for cattle drives from Texas. The town would fill with drunken, armed cowboys celebrating the end of their long journey when the cattle drives arrived, and lawmen were kept busy. When the cattle drives ended and the cowboys left, Earp searched for something else to do. The Wichita City Eagle reported on October 29, 1874, that he had helped an off-duty police officer find thieves who had stolen a man's wagon.[23] Earp officially joined the Wichita marshal's office on April 21, 1875, after the election of Mike Meagher as city marshal (or police chief), making $100 per month. He also dealt faro at the Long Branch Saloon.[44] In late 1875, the Wichita Beacon published this story:

On last Wednesday (December 8), policeman Earp found a stranger lying near the bridge in a drunken stupor. He took him to the 'cooler' and on searching him found in the neighborhood of $500 on his person. He was taken next morning, before his honor, the police judge, paid his fine for his fun like a little man and went on his way rejoicing. He may congratulate himself that his lines, while he was drunk, were cast in such a pleasant place as Wichita as there are but a few other places where that $500 bank roll would have been heard from. The integrity of our police force has never been seriously questioned.[45]^: 209

Earp's stint as Wichita deputy came to a sudden end on April 2, 1876, when former marshal Bill Smith accused him of using his office to help hire his brothers as lawmen. Earp beat Smith in a fist-fight and was fined $30.[6] The local newspaper reported, "It is but justice to Earp to say he has made an excellent officer." Meagher won the election, but the city council voted against rehiring Earp.[46] His brother James opened a brothel in Dodge City, and Earp left Wichita to join him.[23]

Wyatt dealt faro at the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas.

Interior of Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas, c. 1870-85.

After 1875, Dodge City, Kansas, became a major terminal for cattle drives from Texas along the Chisholm Trail. Earp was appointed assistant marshal in Dodge City under Marshal Lawrence Deger around May 1876. At some point he met prostitute Mattie Blaylock, who became his common-law wife until 1881.[40] Earp spent the winter of 1876–77 in the gold rush boomtown of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory.[47] He and Morgan left Dodge for Deadwood on September 9, 1876, with a team of horses, but they arrived there to find that all the land was already tied up in mining claims, so Morgan decided to return to Dodge. Instead of gambling, Wyatt made a deal to buy all the wood that a local individual had cut and put his horses to work that winter hauling firewood into camp. He made about $5,000 in profit but was unable to file any mining claims, so he returned to Dodge City in the spring.[48]

Wyatt's second wife, Mattie Blaylock

Deadwood in 1876 from a nearby hill.

He rejoined the Dodge City police in spring 1877 at the request of Mayor James H. Kelley. The Dodge City newspaper reported in July 1878 that he'd been fined $1.00 for slapping a muscular prostitute named Frankie Bell, who "heaped epithets upon the unoffending head of Mr. Earp to such an extent as to provide a slap from the ex-officer," according to the account. Bell spent the night in jail and was fined $20, while Earp's fine was the legal minimum.[49]

In October 1877, outlaw Dave Rudabaugh robbed a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp and fled south. Earp was given a temporary commission as deputy U.S. Marshal and left Dodge City, following Rudabaugh over 400 miles (640 km) through Fort Clark, Texas, where the newspaper reported his presence on January 22, 1878, and on to Fort Griffin, Texas.[50]

He arrived at the frontier town on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River and went to the Bee Hive Saloon, the largest in town and owned by John Shanssey, whom Earp had known since he was 21. Shanssey told Earp that Rudabaugh had passed through town earlier in the week, but didn't know where he was headed. Shanssey suggested that Earp ask gambler Doc Holliday, who played cards with Rudabaugh.[50] Doc told Earp that Rudabaugh was headed back into Kansas.[51]

By May 11, 1878, the Dodge newspapers reported that Earp had returned. The Dodge City Times noted on May 14 that he'd been appointed Assistant Marshal for $75 per month,[49] serving under Charlie Bassett. Doc Holliday also showed up in Dodge City with his common-law wife Big Nose Kate during mid 1878. Ed Morrison and another two dozen cowboys rode into Dodge in that time and shot up the town, galloping down Front Street. They entered the Long Branch Saloon, vandalized and harassed the customers. Hearing the commotion, Earp burst through the front door to find numerous guns pointing at him; another version of the story has it that only 3-5 cowboys were there. In both versions, Holliday was playing cards in the back and he put his pistol at Morrison's head, forcing him and his men to disarm.[52] Earp credited Holliday with saving his life that day, and the two were friends ever since.[53]

While in Dodge City, Earp became acquainted with brothers James and Bat Masterson and gambler Luke Short.

Deputies Bat Masterson (standing) and Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, 1876. The scroll on Earp's chest is a cloth pin-on badge.

George Hoyt (spelled sometimes as "Hoy") and other drunken cowboys shot their guns wildly at about 3 AM on July 26, 1878, including three shots into Dodge City's Comique Theater, causing comedian Eddie Foy, Sr. to throw himself to the stage floor in the middle of his act. Fortunately, no one was injured. Assistant Marshal Earp and policeman Bat Masterson responded, along with several citizens, and opened fire with their pistols at the fleeing horsemen. The riders crossed the Arkansas River bridge south of town but Hoyt fell from his horse, wounded in the arm or leg. Earp later told biographer Stuart Lake that he saw Hoyt through his gun sights, illuminated against the morning horizon, and he fired a fatal shot which killed him that day;[54] but the Dodge City Times reported that Hoyt developed gangrene and died on August 21 after his leg was amputated.[55]^: 329

On July 25, 1880, Army Captain Joseph H. Hurst asked Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp to assist him in tracking outlaw Cowboys who had stolen six Army mules from Fort Rucker, Arizona. Virgil requested the assistance of his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, along with Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams, and they found the mules at the McLaurys' ranch. McLaury was a Cowboy, a term which was generally used in that region to refer to a loose association of outlaws, some of whom also were land-owners and ranchers. Legitimate cowmen were referred to as cattle herders or ranchers. They found a branding iron which the Cowboys had used to change the "U.S." brand into "D.8."[53] Stealing the mules was a federal offense because the animals were government property.[1]^: 27

Cowboy Frank Patterson made an agreement with Captain Hurst, and Hurst persuaded the posse to withdraw with the understanding that the mules would be returned. The Cowboys showed up two days later without the mules and laughed at Hurst and the Earps. In response, Hurst printed a handbill describing the theft, and he charged McLaury with hiding the mules. He also reproduced the handbill in The Tombstone Epitaph on July 30, 1880. McLaury angrily printed a response in the Cowboy-friendly Nuggett, calling Hurst "unmanly", "a coward, a vagabond, a rascal, and a malicious liar", and accusing him of stealing the mules himself. Hurst later cautioned the Earp brothers that the Cowboys had threatened their lives.[53] Virgil reported that McLaury accosted him and said, "If you ever again follow us as close as you did, then you will have to fight anyway."[1]^: 28 A month later, Earp ran into Frank and Tom McLaury in Charleston, and they told him that they would kill him if he ever followed them as he had done before.[53]

County Sheriff Charles A. Shibell appointed Virgil Earp as deputy sheriff for the eastern part of Pima County, Arizona, on July 28, 1880, which included Tombstone.[59]^: 65 The sheriff's position was worth more than $40,000 (equivalent to $1,123,000 in 2021) per year, because he was also county assessor and tax collector, and the board of supervisors allowed him to keep 10% of the amounts paid.[67]^: 157 Wyatt, appointed a deputy by his brother, then passed his Wells Fargo job as shotgun messenger to his brother Morgan. Wyatt did his job well, and his name was mentioned nearly every week from August through November in The Tombstone Epitaph or the Nugget newspapers.[68]

On October 28, 1880, Tombstone town marshal Fred White attempted to break up a group of five late-night, drunken revelers shooting at the moon on Allen Street.[69] Deputy Sheriff Earp was in Owens Saloon a block away, though unarmed. Morgan and Fred Dodge were in a cabin nearby. Wyatt heard the shooting and ran to the scene. He borrowed a pistol from Fred Dodge and went to assist White. As he approached White, he saw White attempt to disarm Curly Bill Brocius and the gun discharged, striking White in the groin.[70]^: 117 Throughout the shooting Earp was standing by a chimney that was struck repeatedly by gunfire. He buffaloed Brocius, knocking him to the ground, then he grabbed Brocius by the collar and told him to get up. Brocius asked, "What have I done?"[70]^: 117[71]^: 173[72] Fred Dodge recalled in a letter he wrote to Stuart Lake in 1928 what he had witnessed:

Wyatt's coolness and nerve never showed to better advantage than they did that night. When Morg and I reached him, Wyatt was squatted on his heels beside Curly Bill and Fred White. Curly Bill's friends were pot-shooting at him in the dark. The shooting was lively and slugs were hitting the chimney and cabin…. in all of that racket, Wyatt's voice was even and quiet as usual.[73][70]^: 117

Earp altered his story later on, telling John H. Flood Jr. that he did not see Brocius's pistol on the ground in the dark until afterward.[74] The pistol contained one expended cartridge and five live rounds.[70]^: 118

Brocius waived a preliminary hearing so that his case could be transferred to Tucson District Court, and Virgil and Wyatt escorted him to Tucson to stand trial—possibly saving him from a lynching.[69] White, age 31, died of his wound two days after his shooting.[70]^: 119[72] On December 27, 1880, Earp testified that White's shooting was accidental. Brocius expressed regret, saying that he had not intended to shoot White. Gunsmith Jacob Gruber testified that Brocius's single-action revolver was defective, allowing it to be discharged at half-cock.[72] A statement was introduced which White had made, stating that the shooting was accidental. The judge ruled that the shooting was accidental and released Brocius. Brocius, however, remained intensely angry about how Earp had pistol-whipped him, and he became an enemy to the Earps.[75]

On November 2, 1880, the Democratic incumbent Charles Shibell ran for re-election as county sheriff against Republican challenger Robert H. Paul. Initially, Shibell was declared the winner by a margin of 58 votes[76] under suspicious circumstances.[77] James C. Hancock reported that Cowboys Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo had served as election officials in San Simon Precinct,[76] although biographer David Johnson places Ringo in New Mexico with Ike Clanton on November 1, the day before the election.[78] Curly Bill had been arrested and jailed in Tucson on October 28 for shooting Marshal White, and he was still there on election day.[79] The home of John Magill was used as the polling place. The precinct only contained about 10 eligible voters[80] (another source says 50),[81] but the Cowboys gathered non-voters such as the children and Chinese and had them cast ballots. They then gave names to all the dogs, donkeys, and poultry and cast ballots in their names for Shibell. Precinct 27 in the San Simon Valley in northern Cochise County, turned out 104 votes, 103 of them for Shibell.[80] The election board met on November 14 and declared Shibell the winner.[71]^: 179

Paul filed a lawsuit on November 19 contesting the election results, alleging that Shibell's Cowboy supporters Ike Clanton, Curly Bill Brocius, and Frank McLaury had conspired in ballot stuffing.[76] In late January 1881, Chief Justice of Arizona C. G. W. French ruled in Paul's favor, but Shibell appealed. A recount found that Paul had 402 votes and Shibell had 354.[80] In April 1881 the election commission found that a mysterious "Henry Johnson" was responsible for certifying the ballots. This turned out to be the same James K. Johnson who had been shooting up Allen Street the night when Marshal White was killed. Moreover, he had testified at Curly Bill's preliminary hearing after he shot Fred White.[76] Johnson later testified in the election hearing and said that the ballots had been left in the care of Ike Clanton's brother Phineas. None of the witnesses during the election hearing reported on ballots being cast by dogs.[79]

Paul was declared the winner of the Pima County sheriff election. However, the election was a moot point by then, as Paul could not replace Behan with Earp because Cochise County was created out of the eastern portion of Pima County on January 1, 1881.[82][83]

Earp served as deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County for only three months. The region was strongly Republican[67]^: 158 and Bob Paul had been expected to defeat Shibell. Earp was a Republican and believed that he would continue in the job. Given how fast eastern Pima County was growing, many expected that it would be split off into its own county soon with Tombstone as its seat, and Earp hoped to win the job as the new county's sheriff and continue receiving the 10% of all tax money collected. Southern Pacific was the major landholder, so tax collection was a relatively easy process.[27]^: 177 In 1882, the Cochise County sheriff earned $24,010.52 (equivalent to $674,000 in 2021) in fees.[84]

Earp resigned from the sheriff's office on November 9, 1880, and Shibell immediately appointed Johnny Behan as the new deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County.[77] Behan had considerably more political experience than Earp, as he had served as Yavapai County sheriff from 1871 to 1873. He had been elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature twice, representing Yavapai Country in the 7th Territorial Legislature in 1873[85]^: 511 and Mohave County in the 10th in 1879.[85]^: 514 Behan moved to the northwest Arizona Territory, where he served as the Mohave County recorder in 1877 and then deputy sheriff of Mohave County at Gillet in 1879.[86]^: 39

Earp and Behan applied for the new position of Cochise County sheriff, which paid the office holder 10% of the fees and taxes collected, as did the Pima County sheriff job.[67]^: 157 Earp thought that he had a good chance to win because he was the former undersheriff in the region and a Republican, like Arizona Territorial Governor John C. Fremont. However, Behan had greater political experience and influence in Prescott.[77]

Earp later testified at the O.K. Corral hearing that he and Behan had made a deal.[55]^: 331 He said that Behan and he agreed that, if Earp withdrew his application, Behan would appoint him as undersheriff. Behan received the appointment in February 1881, but he did not keep his end of the bargain and instead chose Harry Woods as undersheriff, who was a prominent Democrat. Behan testified at first that he had not made any deal with Earp, although he later admitted that he had lied. He said that he broke his promise to Earp because of an incident which occurred shortly before his appointment[87] when Earp learned that Ike and Billy Clanton had one of his prize horses which had been stolen more than a year before. Earp and Holliday rode to the Clanton ranch near Charleston to recover the horse and overtook Behan along the way, who was riding in a wagon. Behan also was heading to the ranch to serve an electioneering subpoena on Ike Clanton.[87] Accounts differ as to what happened next, but Earp testified that Billy Clanton gave up the horse when Earp arrived at the ranch, even before being presented with ownership papers. According to Behan's testimony, however, Earp had told the Clantons that Behan was on his way to arrest them for horse theft. The incident embarrassed the Clantons and Behan, and Behan later testified that he did not want to work with Earp and chose Woods instead.[87]

A possible image of Josephine Sarah Marcus, who left a relationship with Johnny Behan and took up with Wyatt Earp

Later in life, Josephine Sarah Marcus aggressively protected hers and Wyatt's history while in Tombstone. Marcus was deliberately vague about this period, causing modern researchers to question what she was hiding. She said that she first visited Tombstone as part of the Pauline Markham Theater Troupe on December 1, 1879, for a one-week engagement,[88]^: 19 but modern researchers have not found any record that she was ever part of the theater company.[38]^: 43 The many contradictions in her story have led to considerable speculation about her past.

Researchers have identified two women with similar names in the same region of the Arizona Territory whose lives bear many striking parallels. Sadie Mansfield and Sadie Marcus both made a stagecoach journey from San Francisco to Prescott, Arizona Territory; both traveled with a black woman named Julia; both were sexual partners with Behan; both were 19 years old, born in New York City, and had parents from Prussia.[31][89] The only difference noted in the 1880 census is in their occupations: the Sadie who lived in San Francisco is listed as "At home", while the Sadie in Tip Top is recorded as a "Courtesan".[90] Josephine said that her parents hid her activities, and they may have been covering for her when the census taker was a neighbor who knew the family.[38]^: 49

Behan owned a saloon in Tip Top, Arizona, where he maintained a prostitute named Sadie Mansfield, and he moved to Tombstone in September 1880. "Sadie" was a popular nickname for "Sarah", and prostitutes commonly changed their first names.[38]^: 11 Sadie Mansfield, the Tip Top prostitute, may have returned to San Francisco and then rejoined Behan in Tombstone in September 1880 as Sadie Marcus, where they continued their relationship.[45]^: p235

In early 1881, Sadie found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend[45] and kicked him out,[91] although she still used the Behan surname through mid year. Wyatt was in a relationship with Mattie Blaylock, a former prostitute. Earp named a mining claim he filed on February 16, 1880 "Mattie Blaylock."[92] Modern researchers have found Blaylock listed as Earp's wife in the June 1880 census. She suffered from severe headaches and became addicted to laudanum, a commonly used opiate and painkiller, and later committed suicide. When Marcus learned that Stuart Lake had discovered the existence of Blaylock, she successfully demanded that he omit her from his book I Married Wyatt Earp.[93]

After Marcus arrived in Tombstone with Behan, Earp apparently developed an interest in her, although there are no records in Tombstone of a relationship between them. Tombstone diarist George W. Parsons never mentioned seeing Wyatt and Sadie together and neither did John Clum in his memoirs.[45]^: p235 But Earp and Marcus certainly knew each other, as Behan and Earp had offices above the Crystal Palace Saloon.[94]

In April 1882, shortly after he left Tombstone, there is evidence that Earp had developed feelings for Marcus. The Earp posse, by that time on their vendetta ride, arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, intending to stay for two weeks.[95] Wyatt and Holliday had been fast friends since Holliday saved Earp's life in Dodge City three years prior.[53] Wyatt was staying with prominent businessman Henry N. Jaffa, who was also president of the local board of trade. Like Marcus, Jaffa was Jewish. During their stay in Albuquerque, Earp and Holliday ate at the Retreat Restaurant owned by "Fat Charlie". Former New Mexico Territory Governor Miguel Otero wrote in 1940 that "Holliday said something about Earp becoming 'a damn Jew-boy.' Earp became angry and left. [Henry] Jaffa told me later that Earp's woman was a Jewess. Earp did mezuzah when entering the house."[95] The Albuquerque Evening Review reported that Doc Holliday "became intoxicated and indiscreet in his remarks, which offended Wyatt and cause the party to break up. Holliday going with Tipton."[30]

Earp's anger at Holliday's ethnic slur may indicate that his feelings for Marcus were more serious at the time than is commonly known. The information in the letter is compelling because at that time in the 1940s, the possibility of a prior relationship between Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus while in Tombstone was unknown. Otero could know these things only if he had a relationship with someone who had personal knowledge of the people involved.[95][96]

Marcus went to great lengths to sanitize her own and Wyatt's history. For example, as mentioned, she worked hard to keep her name and the name of Wyatt's second wife Mattie out of Stuart Lake's 1931 book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, and Marcus threatened litigation to keep it that way.[97]^: 101 Marcus also told Earp's biographers and others that Earp never drank,[98] did not own gambling saloons, and that he never provided prostitutes to customers, although strong evidence to the contrary exists.[99]

Business card for Tombstone's Oriental Saloon with the names of "W. Erp", "R. B. Clark", and "L. Rickenbaugh"

Losing the undersheriff position left Earp without a job in Tombstone; however, he and his brothers were beginning to make some money on their mining claims in the Tombstone area. In January 1881, Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce gave Earp a 25-percent interest in the faro concession at the Oriental Saloon in exchange for his services as a manager and enforcer.[55]^: 331 Gambling was regarded as a legitimate profession at the time.[100] Earp invited his friend Bat Masterson to Tombstone to help him run the faro tables in the saloon,[101] and he telegraphed Luke Short in June 1881 to offer him a job as a faro dealer.[102][103] Masterson remained until April 1881, when he returned to Dodge City to assist his brother Jim.[104][105]^: 206

Michael O'Rourke killed Henry Schneider, chief engineer of the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company, and said that it was in self defense. Schneider was well liked, and a mob of miners quickly gathered and threatened to lynch O'Rourke on the spot.[47] Lake's biography describes Earp single-handedly dispersing the mob, but the Epitaph gave primary credit to Ben Sippy for calming the crowd, assisted by Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp and Johnny Behan.[55]^: 331 Nevertheless, Lake's account added to Earp's modern legend as a lawman.[47]^: 39

Tensions increased between the Earps and both the Clantons and McLaurys through 1881. Three cowboys attempted to rob a Kinnear & Company stagecoach on March 15, 1881, at 10 pm, which was reportedly carrying $26,000 (equivalent to $730,000 in 2021) in silver bullion. The amount of bullion which the stagecoach actually carried is questioned by modern researchers because it would have weighed about 1,600 pounds (730 kg), because the value of silver at the time was $1 an ounce—a significant weight for a team of horses.[55]^: 132 According to Wells Fargo agent John Q. Jackson, a stagecoach typically carried an Express Box containing bullion weighing only 100 to 150 pounds (45 to 68 kg).[106]

The holdup took place near Benson, during which the robbers killed driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig.[107] The Earps and a posse tracked the men down and arrested Luther King, who confessed that he had been holding the reins while Bill Leonard, Harry "The Kid" Head, and Jim Crain robbed the stage. They arrested King, and Sheriff Johnny Behan escorted him to jail, but somehow King walked in the front door and out the back door.[40]^: 156[108]^: 165

During the hearing into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt testified that he offered Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury the $3,600 in Wells Fargo reward money ($1,200 per robber) in return for information about the identities of the three robbers. He testified that he had other motives for his plan; he hoped that arresting the murderers would boost his chances for election as Cochise County sheriff. He told the court that he had taken the extra step of obtaining a second copy of a telegram for Clanton from Wells Fargo, ensuring that the reward applied for capturing the killers dead or alive.[53] According to testimony given by Wyatt and Virgil, both McLaury and Clanton agreed to provide information to assist in capturing Leonard, Head, and Crain, but they never had a chance to fulfill the agreement. All three suspects were killed when attempting other robberies.[53][109]

In his testimony at the court hearing, Clanton said that Earp did not want to capture the men but to kill them. He told the court that Earp wanted to conceal his family's involvement in the Benson stage robbery and had sworn him to secrecy, and that Morgan Earp had confided in him that he and Wyatt had "piped off $1,400 to Doc Holliday and Bill Leonard", who were supposed to be on the stage the night when Bud Philpot was killed. Clanton told the court, "I was not going to have anything to do with helping to capture—" and then he corrected himself "—kill Bill Leonard, Crane, and Harry Head". Clanton denied having any knowledge of the Wells Fargo telegram confirming the reward money.[110]

Meanwhile, tensions increased between the Earps and the McLaurys when Cowboys robbed the passenger stage on the Sandy Bob Line in the Tombstone area on September 8, bound for nearby Bisbee, Arizona. The masked robbers robbed the passengers and the strongbox, but they were recognized by their voices and language. They were identified as Deputy Sheriff Pete Spence (an alias for Elliot Larkin Ferguson) and Deputy Sheriff Frank Stilwell,[111] a business partner of Spence's. Stilwell was fired a short while later as a deputy sheriff for Sheriff Behan (for county tax "accounting irregularities").[112]

Wyatt and Virgil Earp rode with the sheriff's posse to track the stage robbers, and Wyatt discovered an unusual boot heel print in the mud. The posse checked with a shoemaker in Bisbee and found a matching heel that he had just removed from Stilwell's boot. A further check of a Bisbee corral turned up both Spence and Stilwell, who were arrested by sheriff's deputies Billy Breakenridge and Nagel.[113]

Spence and Stilwell were arraigned on the robbery charges before Justice Wells Spicer, who set their bail at $7,000 each.[111] They were released after paying the bail, but they were rearrested by Virgil for the Bisbee robbery a month later on October 13 on the new federal charge of interfering with a mail carrier.[113] The newspapers, however, reported that they had been arrested for a different stage robbery which occurred on October 8 near Contention City, Arizona, less than two weeks before the O.K. Corral shootout, and this final incident may have been misunderstood by the McLaurys. Wyatt and Virgil were still out of town for the Spence and Stilwell hearing when Frank McLaury confronted Morgan Earp, telling him that the McLaurys would kill the Earps if they tried to arrest Spence, Stilwell, or the McLaurys again.[47]^: 43

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Resignation of Virgil and Wyatt Earp as Deputy Marshals

Virgil was ambushed on December 28 while walking between saloons on Allen Street in Tombstone, and he was maimed by a shotgun blast which struck his left arm and shoulder. Ike Clanton's hat was found in the back of the building across Allen Street from where the shots were fired. Wyatt wired U.S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake asking to be appointed deputy U.S. marshal with authority to select his own deputies.[121] Dake granted the request in late January and provided the Earps with some funds that he borrowed from Wells Fargo, variously reported as between $500 and $3,000.[122]^: 238

In mid-January, Earp's ally Rickabaugh sold the Oriental Saloon to Earp's adversary Milt Joyce, so Wyatt sold his gambling concessions at the hotel. The Earps also raised some funds from sympathetic business owners in town. Wyatt and Virgil submitted their resignations to Dake on February 2, 1882, being tired of the criticism leveled against them, but he refused to accept them because their accounts had not been settled.[122]^: 470 On the same day, Wyatt sent a message to Ike Clanton that he wanted to reconcile their differences, which Clanton refused. Clanton was also acquitted that day of the charges against him in the shooting of Virgil, when the defense brought in seven witnesses who testified that Clanton was in Charleston at the time of the shooting.[122]^: 242 The Earps needed more funds to pay for the extra deputies and associated expenses, as contributions from supportive business owners were not enough. On February 13, Wyatt mortgaged his home to lawyer James G. Howard for $365 (equivalent to $10,000 in 2021); he was never able to repay the loan and Howard foreclosed on the house in 1884.[123]

Morgan Earp was murdered on March 18 while playing billiards, shot by gunmen firing from a dark alley through a door window into the billiard room. He was struck in the right side; the bullet shattered his spine, passed through his left side, and lodged in the thigh of George A. B. Berry, while another round narrowly missed him. A doctor was summoned and Morgan was moved from the floor to a nearby couch, while the murderers escaped in the dark. He died 40 minutes later.[23] Wyatt felt that he could not rely on civil justice and decided to take matters into his own hands[23] to kill the murderers himself.[121]

Earp arrived in Eagle City, Idaho, in 1884 along with Josephine, his brothers Warren and James, and James's wife Bessie. Eagle City was another new boomtown growing from the discovery of gold, silver, and lead in the Coeur d'Alene area; it is now a ghost town in Shoshone County, Idaho.[145] Earp joined the crowd looking for gold in the Murray-Eagle mining district, and they paid $2,250 for a 50 feet (15 m) diameter white circus in which they opened a dance hall and saloon called The White Elephant.[136]

Earp was named deputy sheriff in the area, including newly incorporated Kootenai County, Idaho, which was disputing jurisdiction of Eagle City with Shoshone County. There were a considerable number of disagreements over mining claims and property rights which Earp had a part in. On March 28, a miner named Bill Buzzard was constructing a building when Earp's partner Jack Enright tried to stop him. Enright claimed that the building was on part of his property, and the two men began to argue. Buzzard fired several shots at Enright with his Winchester, then allies of both sides took defensive positions behind snowbanks and began shooting at one another. Earp and his brother James stepped into the middle of the fray and helped peacefully resolve the dispute before anyone was seriously hurt.[137]^{: p275–298}

Around April 1885, Earp reportedly used his badge to join a band of claim jumpers in Embry Camp, later renamed Chewelah, Washington. Within six months, their substantial stake had run dry, and the Earps left the Murray-Eagle district. About 10 years later, a reporter hunted up Buzzard after the Fitzimmons-Sharkey fight and extracted a story from him which accused Earp of being the brains behind lot-jumping and a real-estate fraud, further tarnishing his reputation.[137]^{: 275–298}

The Coeur d'Alene mining venture died out by 1887, so Earp and Josephine went to San Diego, California where the railroad was about to arrive and a real estate boom was underway. They stayed for about four years, living most of the time in the Brooklyn Hotel.[146] Earp speculated in San Diego's booming real estate market,[147] and he bought four saloons and gambling halls between 1887 and around 1896, all in the "respectable" part of town.[147][148][149] They offered 21 games, including faro, blackjack, poker, keno, pedro, and monte.[147] At the height of the boom, he made up to $1,000 a night in profit.[150] He also owned the Oyster Bar located in the first granite-faced building in San Diego, the four-story Louis Bank Building at 837 5th Avenue, one of the more popular saloons in the Stingaree district.[47]^: 71 One of the reasons that it drew a good crowd was the Golden Poppy brothel upstairs, owned by Madam Cora. Each room was painted a different color, such as emerald green, summer yellow, or ruby red,[151] and each prostitute was required to dress in matching garments.[152]

Earp had a long-standing interest in boxing and horse racing, and he refereed boxing matches in San Diego, Tijuana, and San Bernardino.[99] In the 1887 San Diego City Directory, he was listed as a capitalist or gambler. He won a race horse named Otto Rex in a card game and began investing in race horses,[153] and he also judged prize fights on both sides of the border;[147] he was one of the judges at the county fair horse races held in Escondido, California, in 1889.[154] The boom came to an end as rapidly as it had started, and the population of San Diego fell from a high of 40,000 in 1885 when Earp arrived to only 16,000 in 1890.[153]

The Earps moved back to San Francisco in 1891[27] so that Josephine could be closer to her half-sister Henrietta's family, and Earp developed a reputation as a sportsman and a gambler.[59] He held on to his San Diego properties, but when their value fell, he could not pay the taxes and was forced to sell the lots. He continued to race horses, but he could no longer afford to own them by 1896, so he raced them on behalf of the owner of a horse stable in Santa Rosa which he managed.[27] In Santa Rosa, Earp personally competed in and won a harness race.[59]^: 171 From 1891 to 1897, the couple lived in at least four different locations in the city: 145 Ellis St., 720 McAllister St., 514A Seventh Ave., and 1004 Golden Gate Ave.[59]

Josephine wrote in her memoir that she and Earp were married in 1892 by the captain of multimillionaire Lucky Baldwin's yacht off the California coast. Raymond Nez wrote that his grandparents witnessed their marriage,[155] but no public record has been found for the marriage.[91] Baldwin was a horse breeder and racer who also owned the Santa Anita race track in Los Angeles which Earp frequented.[142]

Earp's relationship with Josephine was tempestuous at times. She gambled to excess and he had adulterous affairs.[38]^: 54 He knew that she preferred being called "Josephine" and detested "Sadie", but he had a mischievous sense of humor and began calling her Sadie early in their relationship.[136] Earp's good friends in the Welsh family did not appreciate Josephine's gambling habits, and they noted that she received an allowance from her half-sister Rebecca and gambled it away, often leaving her husband hungry.[156][157]

In the 1920s, Earp gave Josephine signed legal papers and filing fees to a claim for an oil lease in Kern County, California. She gambled away the filing fees and lied to him about what happened to the lease, which later turned out to be valuable. He distrusted her ability to manage her finances and made an arrangement with her sister Henrietta Lenhardt. He put oil leases in Henrietta's name with the agreement that the proceeds would benefit Josephine after his death. In February 1926, the oil well was completed and producing 150 barrels a day, but Henrietta's three children refused to keep the agreement after their mother's death and kept the royalties to themselves.[158]^: 259[159] Josephine sued her sister's estate in an attempt to collect the royalties.[160]

Josephine later developed a reputation as a shrew who made life difficult for Earp.[161] She frequently griped about his lack of work and financial success and even his character and personality, and he often went on long walks to get away from her. He was furious about her gambling habit, during which she lost considerable sums of money; each may have engaged in extramarital affairs.[158]^: 259[162] Josephine could also be controlling,[155] and a relative of Wyatt joked that nobody could convict him of cold-blooded murder because he had lived with her for almost 50 years.[158]

A caricature of Wyatt Earp after the Sharkey-Fitzimmons fight: The public was outraged by his decision as referee and newspapers pilloried him for many weeks afterward.

Earp was a last-minute choice as referee for a boxing match on December 2, 1896, which the promoters billed as the heavyweight championship of the world, when Bob Fitzsimmons was set to fight Tom Sharkey at the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco. Earp had refereed 30 or so matches in earlier days, though not under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules but under the older and more liberal London Prize Ring Rules.[163] The fight may have been the most anticipated fight on American soil that year. Fitzsimmons was favored to win, and the public and even civic officials placed bets on the outcome.[164][165]

Fitzsimmons dominated Sharkey throughout the fight, and he hit Sharkey with his famed "solar plexus punch" in the eighth round, an uppercut under the heart that could render a man temporarily helpless. Then, at Fitzsimmons' next punch, Sharkey dropped, clutched his groin, and rolled on the canvas screaming foul.[24] Earp stopped the bout, ruling that Fitzsimmons had hit Sharkey below the belt, but virtually no one witnessed the punch. Earp awarded the fight to Sharkey, whom attendants carried out as "limp as a rag".[54] The 15,000 fans in attendance greeted his decision with loud boos and catcalls.[91][166] It was widely believed that no foul had occurred and that Earp had bet on Sharkey.[55] Several doctors verified afterward that Sharkey had been hit hard below the belt, but the public had bet heavily on Fitzsimmons and they were livid at the outcome.[167]

Fitzsimmons went to court to overturn Earp's decision,[137] and newspaper accounts and testimony over the next two weeks revealed a conspiracy among the boxing promoters to fix the fight's outcome.[168] Newspapers across the United States republished the stories from the San Francisco papers and looked for local angles. On December 14, 1896, the San Francisco Call quoted a story from the New York Journal by Alfred H. Lewis, who accused the Earp brothers of being "stage robbers",[169] and Earp was parodied in editorial caricatures by newspapers across the country.[170] Stories about the fight and Earp's contested decision were distributed nationwide to a public that knew little of Wyatt Earp prior to that time.[169]

On December 17, Judge Sanderson finally ruled that prize fighting was illegal in San Francisco and the courts would not determine who the winner was. Sharkey retained the purse, but the decision provided no vindication for Earp.[137] Until the fight, Earp had been a minor figure known regionally in California and Arizona; afterward, his name was known from coast to coast. The boxing match left a smear on his public character which followed him until he died and afterward.[132] Eight years later, Dr. B. Brookes Lee was accused of treating Sharkey to make it appear that he had been fouled by Fitzsimmons, and Lee admitted that it was true. "I fixed Sharkey up to look as if he had been fouled," he confessed. "I got $1,000 for my part in the affair."[171]

The Earps rented this cabin in Rampart, Alaska, from Rex Beach and spent the winter of 1898–1899 there.

Nome, Alaska in 1900 was about two blocks wide and five miles long.

Nome, Alaska, in 1900: The Dexter Saloon at left was owned by Wyatt Earp and his partner Charles E. Hoxie. It was the city's first two-story wooden building and its largest and most luxurious saloon.

While in Yuma, Wyatt heard of the gold rush in the Alaska Yukon. On August 5, 1897, Wyatt and Sadie left for San Francisco. Earp was reported to have secured the backing of a syndicate of sporting men to open a gambling house there.[172] They intended to catch a ship to Alaska, but their departure was delayed for seven weeks when Wyatt fell while getting off Market Street streetcar and bruised or broke his hip. Sadie got pregnant too, and she thought she could persuade Earp from heading to Alaska. He was in agreement, but Sadie, who was 37, miscarried soon after.[9][98][173][47]^: 78 They finally boarded the steamship Rosalie on September 21, 1897.[174] They arrived in Dawson in the Yukon on late September, where Wyatt planned to open a faro game. Wyatt and Josephine spent only a month in Dawson.

When they returned north, Wyatt was offered a job as the marshal in Wrangell, Alaska, but he served for only 10 days. Sadie learned she was pregnant again, and they returned to San Francisco on October 11 aboard the steamship City of Seattle.[172][173][175] But Sadie miscarried again.

The Earps spent the winter in Wrangell before setting out in the spring for Dawson on board the Governor Pingree via the Yukon River. By the time they reached Rampart on the Yukon River, freeze-up had set in. The Earps rented a cabin from Rex Beach for $100 a month and spent the winter of 1898–1899 there.

In 1898, they got as far as Rampart before the Yukon River froze in place for the winter. Rampart was a friendly place, but far from the real action. They left with the spring thaw and headed for St. Michael, on the Norton Sound, a major gateway to the Alaskan interior via the Yukon River. Wyatt managed a small store during the spring of 1899, selling beer and cigars for the Alaska Commercial Company.[176][177][178] But Wyatt's friend Tex Rickard sent him a number of letters belittling Wyatt's steady but small income in St. Michael as "chickenfeed" and persuaded him to relocate to Nome.[9]

Photographed in 1901, Wyatt Earp billed his Dexter Saloon in Nome as "The only second class saloon in Alaska".

At the time of the Earps' arrival, Nome was two blocks wide and five miles long. The best accommodations Wyatt and Sadie could find was a wooden shack a few minutes from the main street, only slightly better than a tent. The river was an open sewer. Typhoid, dysentery and pneumonia were common.[9] In September, Earp and partner Charles E. Hoxie built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, the city's first two-story wooden building and its largest and most luxurious saloon.[179] The second floor had 12 "clubrooms" decorated with fine mirrors, thick carpets, draperies, and sideboards.[180] Trading on Earp's name, the Dexter was a success. It was used for a variety of purposes because it was so large: 70 by 30 feet (21.3 m × 9.1 m) with 12 feet (3.7 m) ceilings.[70] Earp used the club rooms upstairs as a brothel, another fact that Sadie worked hard to see was omitted from stories about him.[98] Sadie justified the services upstairs because the Dexter was a "better class" saloon and served an "important civic purpose".[9]

The Dexter drew anyone famous who visited Nome. Wyatt rubbed elbows with future novelist Rex Beach, writer Jack London, playwright Wilson Mizner, and boxing promoter Tex Rickard,[45] with whom Earp developed a long-lasting relationship.[181] Rickard was a partner in the Northern Saloon and gambling house in Nome. Both the Dexter and the Northern Saloon competed for business with more than 60 other saloons in town serving an estimated 20,000 residents.[182] Wyatt told others he made his money by "mining the miners".[173]

He was arrested twice in Nome for minor offenses, including being drunk and disorderly, although he was not tried.[183] Most members of law enforcement were corrupt or otherwise engaged.[182]

Wyatt Earp in Nome, Alaska, with long-time friend and former Tombstone mayor and newspaper editor John Clum, 1900

The pistol was said to be Wyatt Earp's, left behind in Juneau, Alaska, but he was arrested in Nome three days before the date on the sign.

The Wyatt Earp and Josephine Sarah Marcus Cottage in Vidal, California

In November 1899, Earp left Alaska on the 258 feet (79 m) iron steamer Cleveland. The ship was infested with lice and was struck by a storm on the Bering Sea, making for a difficult trip. It took nine days to reach Seattle, Washington.[173][184]

On July 6, 1900, Wyatt's brother Warren was shot and killed in a saloon in Willcox, Arizona. Wyatt learned about his death soon after, and although some modern researchers believe he went to Arizona to avenge his brother's death, the distance and time required to make the trip made it unlikely, and no contemporary evidence has been found to support that theory.[155]

In 2018, archivists at the Alaska State Library digitized a collection of documents relating to Earp's arrival and stay in Alaska.[185]

Earp arrived in Seattle with a plan to open a saloon and gambling room. On November 25, 1899, the Seattle Star described him as "a man of great reputation among the toughs and criminals, inasmuch as he formerly walked the streets of a rough frontier mining town with big pistols stuck in his belt, spurs on his boots, and a devil-may-care expression upon his official face". The Seattle Daily Times was less full of praise, announcing in a very small article that he had a reputation in Arizona as a "bad man", which in that era was synonymous with "villain" and "desperado".[186][187]

He faced considerable opposition to his plan from John Considine, who controlled all three gaming operations in town. Although gambling was illegal, Considine had worked out an agreement with Police Chief C. S. Reed. Earp partnered with an established local gambler named Thomas Urguhart, and they opened the Union Club saloon and gambling operation in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The Seattle Star noted two weeks later that Earp's saloon was earning a large following. Considine unsuccessfully tried to intimidate Earp, but his saloon continued to prosper. After the city failed to act, on March 23, 1900, the Washington state attorney general filed charges against several gamblers, including Earp and his partner. The club's furnishings were confiscated and burned. The Earps returned briefly to San Francisco in April 1900, but soon continued on to Seattle.

Newspapers in Seattle and San Francisco falsely reported on Wyatt's wealth which prompted a stampede to Nome to seek similar riches. Nome was advertised as an "exotic summer destination" and four ships a day left Seattle with passengers infected with "gold fever".

On June 14, 1900, Wyatt and Sadie boarded the steamer SS Alliance in Seattle, bound for Nome.[186][188][47]^: 78 They brought many luxurious accessories with them to decorate The Dexter. Within weeks Nome had grown to a city of over 20,000 inhabitants. In 1900, the major business there "was not mining, but gambling and saloon trade. There were 100 saloons and gambling houses, with an occasional restaurant." Losses of $10,000 per hand in poker were not extraordinary. Prize fighting became the sport of choice and Wyatt's income soared with side bets. He often refereed bouts himself at The Dexter.[189]

The Earps stayed at the Hollenback Hotel in Los Angeles in December 1901 after returning from Alaska.

Wyatt Earp's Northern Saloon, Tonopah, Nevada, circa 1902: The man in the center is believed to be Wyatt Earp, and the woman on the left is often identified as Josephine Earp.

In November 1901, at age 40, Sadie got pregnant again, and she and Wyatt decided to leave Alaska. They sold their interest in the Dexter to their partner, Charlie Hoxie.[47]^: 76

Wyatt and Sadie left Alaska on board the SS Roanoke and arrived in Los Angeles at the Hollenbeck Hotel on December 13, 1901.[173][190] They had an estimated US$80,000 (equivalent to $2,605,760 in 2021), a relative fortune. Sadie miscarried and lost the baby. Three months later, in February 1902, they arrived in Tonopah, Nevada, known as the "Queen of the Silver Camps", where silver and gold had been discovered in 1900 and a boom was under way. Wyatt and Sadie opened the Northern Saloon in Tonopah and he served as a deputy U.S. marshal under Marshal J.F. Emmitt.[47]^: 78[191] His saloon, oil, and copper mining interests produced some income for a period.[192]

After Tonopah's gold strike waned, they moved in 1905 to Goldfield, Nevada, where his brother Virgil and his wife were living.[38]^: 55 Tex Rickard was also already there and had opened a second Northern Saloon. He hired Wyatt as a pit boss.[193] Wyatt also staked mining claims just outside Death Valley and elsewhere in the Mojave Desert. In 1906, he discovered several deposits of gold and copper near the Sonoran Desert town of Vidal, California, on the Colorado River and filed more than 100 mining claims[91] near the Whipple Mountains.[194]^: 83 While in Los Angeles, they lived in at least nine small Los Angeles rentals as early as 1885 and as late as 1929, mostly mid year.[91]

In 1910, when he was 62, the Los Angeles Police Department hired Wyatt and former Los Angeles detective Arthur Moore King at $10.00 per day to carry out various tasks "outside the law" such as retrieving criminals from Mexico, which he did very capably. This led to Wyatt's final armed confrontation. In October 1910, he was asked by former Los Angeles Police Commissioner H. L. Lewis to head up a posse to protect surveyors of the American Trona Company who were attempting to wrest control of mining claims for vast deposits of potash on the edge of Searles Lake held in receivership by the foreclosed California Trona Company. Wyatt and the group he guarded were regarded as claim jumpers and were confronted by armed representatives of the other company. King wrote, "it was the nerviest thing he had ever seen". With guns pulled, Wyatt came out of his tent with a Winchester rifle, firing a round at the feet of Federal Receiver Stafford W. Austin. "Back off or I'll blow you apart, or my name is not Wyatt Earp".[195] The owners summoned the U.S. marshal, who arrested Earp and 27 others, served them with a summons for contempt of court, and sent them home. Earp's actions did not resolve the dispute, which eventually escalated into the "Potash Wars" of the Mojave Desert.[195][196]

On July 23, 1911, Earp was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with attempting to fleece J. Y. Peterson, a realty broker, in a fake faro game. Since money had not changed hands, the charge against Earp was reduced to vagrancy and he was released on $500 bail.[197]

Wyatt and Josephine Earp in their mining camp near Vidal, California: This is the only confirmed picture of the two of them together.[198]

Wyatt Earp's camp, tent and ramada near Vidal, California and Wyatt's mining operations. Sadie is at left, Wyatt is on the right with his dog.

The Earps bought a small cottage in Vidal, the only home they ever owned. Beginning in 1911 and until Wyatt's health began to fail in 1928, Wyatt and Sadie Earp summered in Los Angeles and spent the rest of the year in the desert working their claims.[199][198] The "Happy Days" mine was located in the Whipple Mountains a few miles north of Vidal.[199] Wyatt had some modest success with the Happy Days gold mine,[56] and they lived on the slim proceeds of income from that and oil wells in Oakland and Kern County.[200][201][202]

In about 1923, Charles Welsh, a retired railroad engineer and friend that Earp had known since Dodge City, frequently invited the Earps to visit his family in San Bernardino.[203]

When the Welsh family moved to Los Angeles, the Earps accepted an invitation to stay with them for a while in their top-floor apartment until the Earps found a place to rent.[156] After Earp and Sadie moved into a bungalow nearby, Charlie Welsh's daughter, Grace Spolidora, recalled that Sadie, who had never had many domestic skills, did very little housekeeping or cooking for Wyatt. She and her sister Alma were concerned about the care Sadie gave Wyatt. Though he was at times very ill, she still did not cook for him. Spolidora, her sisters, and her mother brought in meals.[155]

While living in Los Angeles, Earp became an unpaid film consultant for several silent cowboy movies.[204][205] In 1915, Earp visited the set of director Allan Dwan's movie, The Half-Breed, starring Douglas Fairbanks. In his autobiography, Dwan recalled, "As was the custom in those days, he [Earp] was invited to join the party and mingle with our background action."[203]

Obverse of pocket watch given to Wyatt Earp by Tom Mix

Earp became friends with William S. Hart and later Tom Mix, the two most famous movie cowboys of their era. Hart was a stickler for realism in his depictions of Western life, and may have relied on Earp for advice. Earp later frequently visited the sets of movie director John Ford, whose movies starred Harry Carey.[203] Ford's son Patrick later wrote, "My dad was real friendly with Wyatt Earp, and as a little boy I remember him."[206]

In 1916, Earp went with his friend Jack London, whom he knew from Nome, to visit the set of former cowboy, sailor, and movie actor-turned-film director Raoul Walsh, who was shooting at the studio of Mutual Film conglomerate in Edendale, California. Walsh took the two men to dinner at Al Levy's Cafe on Main and Third Street. During the meal, the highest paid entertainer in the world, Charlie Chaplin, dropped by to greet Wyatt Earp. Chaplin was impressed by both men, but particularly the former Tombstone marshal.[203]

In the early 1920s, Earp was given the honorary title of deputy sheriff in San Bernardino County, California.[23] On January 25, 1926, Wyatt's brother James died of cerebral apoplexy in San Bernardino, California.[19]

Earp tried to persuade his good friend, well-known cowboy movie star William S. Hart, to help set the record straight about his life and get a movie made.[207] "If the story were exploited on the screen by you," he wrote Hart, "It would do much toward setting me right before a public which has always been fed lies about me."[23][207] Hart encouraged Earp to first find an author to pen his story.[208]

In 1925, Earp began to collaborate on a biography with his friend and former mining engineer John Flood to get his story told in a way that he approved.[198][208] Flood volunteered his time and attempted to write an authorized biography of Earp's life, based on Earp's recollections. The two men sat together every Sunday in the kitchen of Earp's modest, rented bungalow. While Wyatt sipped a drink and smoked a cigar, they tried to tell Earp's story, but Josephine was always present.[155] She often interrupted and insisted, "You can't write that! It needs to be clean." She also demanded that they add more "pep" to the manuscript, which in her mind meant including the word "CRACK!" in all capitals. In the chapter about the shootout, the manuscript includes 109 uses of "CRACK". She thought Earp needed to be shown as a hero, and the manuscript includes a chapter titled "Conflagration" in which Earp saves two women, one a cripple, from a Tombstone fire.[198]

Spolidora as a teenager had visited the Earps many times near her family home in Needles, California, and she sometimes went to San Diego with them.[155] In an interview with the San Bernardino historical society in 1990, she attributed the highly exaggerated stories about Wyatt Earp to Josephine. Josephine "would always interfere whenever Wyatt would talk with Stuart Lake. She always interfered! She wanted him to look like a church-going saint and blow things up. Wyatt didn't want that at all!"[156]

Flood's writing was "stilted, corny, and one-dimensional", and the manuscript, completed some time in early 1926, never found a publisher.[203] In February 1927, editor Anne Johnston of Bobbs Merrill wrote back and was highly critical of the "stilted, florid, and diffuse" writing. She wrote, "Now one forgets what it's all about in the clutter of unimportant details that impedes its pace, and the pompous manner of its telling."[209]

Hart tried to help. In February 1926, he wrote The Saturday Evening Post and encouraged them to publish Flood's biography so "that  ... the rising generation may know the real from the unreal",[208] but Flood was a horrendous writer, and publisher after publisher rejected the manuscript.[210]^: xvi Several copies were made and sold in 1981, and the original carbon copy of the typed manuscript, found among Josephine Earp's papers, was given by Glenn Boyer to the Ford County Historical Society.[211]

The funeral was held at the Congregational Church on Wilshire Boulevard.[155] Earp's pallbearers were William J. Hunsaker, (Earp's attorney in Tombstone and noted Los Angeles attorney); Jim Mitchell (Los Angeles Examiner reporter and Hollywood screenwriter); George W. Parsons (founding member of Tombstone's "Committee of Vigilance"); Wilson Mizner (a friend of Wyatt's during the Klondike Gold Rush); John Clum (a good friend from his days in Tombstone, former Tombstone mayor, and editor of The Tombstone Epitaph); William S. Hart (good friend and Western actor and silent film star);[207] and Tom Mix (friend and Western film star).[204] Mitchell wrote Wyatt's local obituary.[214] The newspapers reported that Tom Mix cried during his friend's service. When Josephine did not attend Wyatt's funeral, Grace Spolidora was furious. "She didn't go to his funeral, even. She wasn't that upset. She was peculiar. I don't think she was that devastated when he died."[155]

The Earps' replacement headstone at the Jewish Hills of Eternity Cemetery in Colma, California

Josephine, who was Jewish,[215] had Earp's body cremated and secretly buried his remains in the Marcus family plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. When she died in 1944, her body was buried alongside his ashes. She had purchased a small white marble headstone which was stolen shortly after her death in 1944. It was discovered in a backyard in Fresno, California. A second flat granite headstone was also stolen.[216][217]

On July 7, 1957, grave-robbers dug 5 feet (1.5 m) into the Earp's grave in an apparent attempt to steal the urn containing his ashes. Unable to find his cremains, they stole the 500 pounds (230 kg) grave stone.[218] Actor Hugh O'Brian, who was playing Earp in the 1955–1961 television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, offered a reward for the stone's return. It was located for sale in a flea market.[216][217]

Cemetery officials re-set the stone flush in concrete, but it was stolen again. Actor Kevin Costner, who played Earp in the 1994 movie Wyatt Earp offered to buy a new, larger stone, but the Marcus family thought his offer was self-serving and declined. Descendants of Josie's half-sister Rebecca allowed a Southern California group in 1998-99 to erect the stone currently in place. The earlier stone is on display in the Colma Historical museum.[216][217]

In 1957, the Tombstone Restoration Commission looked for Wyatt's ashes with the intention of having them re-located to Tombstone. They contacted family members seeking permission and the location of his ashes, but no one could or would tell them where they were buried, not even his closest living relative, George Earp. Arthur King, a deputy to Earp from 1910 to 1912, finally revealed that Josephine had buried Wyatt's ashes in Colma, California. The Marcus family kept the location secret to avoid hordes of visitors from trampling the site. The Tombstone Commission decided it would not seek to relocate Earp's remains. His and Josie's gravesite is the most visited resting place in the Jewish cemetery.[219][217]

Two years before his death, Earp defended his decisions before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and his actions afterward in an interview with Stuart Lake, author of the 1931 largely fictionalized biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal:

For my handling of the situation at Tombstone, I have no regrets. Were it to be done over again, I would do exactly as I did at that time. If the outlaws and their friends and allies imagined that they could intimidate or exterminate the Earps by a process of murder, and then hide behind alibis and the technicalities of the law, they simply missed their guess. I want to call your particular attention again to one fact, which writers of Tombstone incidents and history apparently have overlooked: with the deaths of the McLaurys, the Clantons, Stillwell, Florentino Cruz, Curly Bill, and the rest, organized, politically protected crime and depredations in Cochise County ceased.[200]

Wyatt was reputed to be an expert with a revolver. He showed no fear of any man.[227]^: 83 The Tombstone Epitaph said of Wyatt, "bravery and determination were requisites, and in every instance proved himself the right man in the right place".[228]

Wyatt was lucky during the few gun fights he took part in from his earliest job as an assistant police officer in Wichita to Tombstone, where he was briefly deputy U.S. marshal. Unlike his lawmen brothers Virgil and James, Wyatt was never wounded, although once his clothing and his saddle were shot through with bullet holes.[209] According to John H. Flood's biography (as dictated to him by Wyatt Earp), Wyatt vividly recalled a presence that in several instances warned him away or urged him to take action. This happened when he was on the street, alone in his room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, at Bob Hatch's Pool Hall, where he went moments before Morgan was assassinated, and again when he approached Iron Springs and surprised Curly Bill Brocius, killing him.[209]

On April 16, 1894, the Fort Worth Gazette wrote that Virgil Earp and John Behan had a "deadly feud". It described Behan as "an honest man, a good official, and possessed many of the attributes of a gentleman". Earp, on the other hand, "was head of band of desperadoes, a partner in stage robbers, and a friend of gamblers and professional killers  ... Wyatt was the boss killer of the region."[229]

Former nemesis Johnny Behan continued to spread rumors about the Earps for the next 20 years. On December 7, 1897, he was quoted in a story in the Washington Post, reprinted by the San Francisco Call, describing the Earp's lawbreaking behavior in Tombstone. After referring to the Fitzimmons-Sharkey fight, the article quoted Behan. "The Clanton brothers and the McLowrys were a tough lot of rustlers who were the main perpetrators of the rascailly rife in that region. Between them and Earps rose a bitter feud over the division of the proceeds of the looting. The Earp boys believed they had failed to get a fair divide of the booty and swore vengeance. They caught their former allies in Tombstone unarmed and shot three of them dead while their hands were uplifted." Behan went on to say, "They were hauled up before a Justice of the Peace  ... Warrants were issued for their arrest, and, summoning a posse, I went out to bring the Earps in. They were chased entirely out of the country and Tombstone knew them no more." Up until he died in 1912, Johnny Behan lambasted the Earps as the bad men who had attacked the cowboys.[230]

After Earp left Alaska in 1901, the New York Sun printed a story in 1903 that described a confrontation Earp had reportedly had with a short 5 feet (1.5 m) Cockney Canadian Mountie, who embarrassed Earp by demanding that he leave his weapon in his room. The story was reprinted as far away as New Zealand by the Otago Witness.[231] The Dawson Record commented on the story, mocking the newspaper as a "venerable dispenser of truth".[232]

On April 13, 1921, the Arizona Republican ran a lengthy interview with Thomas Raines, a former resident of Tombstone. Raines described the gunfight as an ambush. He said that he remembered the Earps shot the Cowboys and killed Ike Clanton (when they actually killed his brother Billy) before the Cowboys had a chance to surrender. He recalled that the Cowboys "were leading their horses out of the gate when they were confronted, almost from ambush, by four of the Earps, Virgil. Wyatt, Morgan and Jim and by Doc Holliday. Virgil Earp, armed with a sawed off express shotgun, and accompanying his demand with profanity, yelled "Hands up!" But he didn't wait for the action demanded and shot almost as soon as he spoke. Tom McLowery [sic] showed his empty bands, and cried. 'Gentlemen, I am unarmed.' Holliday answered with the discharge of his shotgun. Ike Clanton fell at the first fire, mortally wounded, but he rolled over and fired two shots from his pistol between his bent knees."[233]

During 1922, Frederick R. Bechdolt published the book When the West Was Young,[234] which included a story about Wyatt's time in Tombstone, but he mangled many basic facts. He described the Earp-Clanton differences as the falling-out of partners in crime.[133][235]

On March 12, 1922, the Sunday Los Angeles Times ran a short, scandalous article titled "Lurid Trails Are Left by Olden-Day Bandits" by J.M. Scanland.[236] It described Wyatt and his brothers as a gang, comparable to the Dalton Gang, who waylaid the cowboys in the shoot out at the O.K. Corral. It said that the Earps were allies of Frank Stilwell, who had informed on them, so they killed him,[207] and that Earp had died in Colton, California.[237]

The author concocted a fictional description of the Earp's relationship with Sheriff Behan and the Cowboys:

Trouble arose between them and Sheriff John Behan, who tried to 'clean up' the town. Trouble began when four cowboys refused to recognize the right of the Earp gang to rule the town. The cowboys were Bill and Ike Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowry. The Earps ordered the cowboys out of town and they were preparing to leave when they were waylaid and a gun battle followed during which Virgil Earp was shot in the leg, Morgan Earp in the shoulder and Ike Clanton was killed. The town was aroused and Frank Stilwell, who led the stage robberies, brought the trouble to a climax when he informed against his partners, because the Earps would not divide fairly. In a gun battle that followed, Stilwell killed Morgan Earp. A few months later another stage was robbed, and the driver, 'Bud' Philpot, was killed.[207]

Josephine and Earps' friend and actor William Hart both wrote letters to the publisher. Josephine demanded that the error "must be corrected and printed in the same sensational manner" given to the correction as to the original article, which the paper published.[207][238]

At the time of his death, Earp may have been more well known for the controversy that engulfed him after the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey match in San Francisco than for the gunfight in Tombstone.[167][24] His Associated Press obituary gave prominent attention to his officiating of the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight, while describing him as a "gun-fighter whose blazing six-shooters were, for most of his life, allied with the side of law and order".[181]

In its January 14, 1929, obituary, the Los Angeles Times wrote a fictional account of Earp taming Colton, California:

As Deputy United States Marshal, Earp had been sent from town to town to quell disturbances and establish peace. His only recorded visit to California in those days was his memorable trip to Colton, then known as the "toughest town untamed". Within a week Wyatt Earp had the town running like a clock, but at the cost of not a few lives of "prominent citizens". Earp could shoot with his two guns from all angles and instantly made his presence felt in Colton.[212]

Author Walter Noble Burns visited Earp in September 1926 and asked him questions with the intent to write a book about Earp. Earp declined because he was already collaborating with John Flood. Burns visited Tombstone and based on what he learned decided instead to focus his book on Doc Holliday. He pestered Earp for facts, and on March 27 the next year, Earp finally responded to Burns' repeated requests in an 11-page letter outlining the basic facts from Earp's point of view.[208]

When their efforts to get the Flood manuscript published failed, the Earps decided to appeal to Burns, whose own book was near publication. But he was not interested. His book was about to be published, free of the constraints imposed by a collaboration with Earp.[209] Burns wrote them, "I should not now care to undertake another book which, in part at least, would be upon much the same lines  ... I should have been delighted six months ago to accept your offer but it is too late now. My book has championed Mr. Earp's cause throughout and I believe will vindicate his reputation in Tombstone in a way that he will like."[239] When Burns turned them down, Josephine actively worked to stop the publication of his book, fearful that their efforts to publish Wyatt's biography would be thwarted as a result.[239]

In late 1927, Burns published Tombstone, An Iliad of the Southwest, a mesmerizing tale "of blood and thunder," that christened Earp as the "Lion of Tombstone".[210]^: xvi "Strong, bold, forceful, picturesque was the fighter of the old frontier. Something epic in him, fashioned in Homeric mold. In his way, a hero."[240]^: 135 It included a good deal about Wyatt, to Wyatt and Josie's displeasure. Readers and reviewers had difficulty discerning between "fact and fiction".[208] The book is the first to have popularized its subject for a mass reading audience. Burns treated Earp as a mythical figure, a "larger-than-life hero whose many portrayals in film, television, and books often render fidelity to truth the first casualty".[240]^: 135

While living in Vidal, Wyatt and Josie were visited by Billy Breakenridge, the former Tombstone deputy under John Behan. He pressed Wyatt for details about his time in Tombstone to add to his book Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite. Breakenridge was assisted by Western novelist William MacLeod Raine, who since 1904 had published more than 25 novels about Western history. The book was published in 1928 before Wyatt died.[133] It depicted Wyatt as a thief, pimp, crooked gambler, and murderer.[198] Breakenridge wrote that the Earps and Doc Holliday aggressively mistreated the guiltless cowboys until they were forced into a fatal confrontation.[241] His description of the 1881 O.K. Corral gun fight stated that the Clanton and McLaury brothers were merely cowboys who had been unarmed and surrendered but the Earp brothers had shot them in cold blood.[198] Wyatt and Josie protested that the book's contents was biased and more fiction than fact. Earp complained about the book until his death in 1929, and his wife continued in the same vein afterward.[241]

Edwin V. Burkholder, who specialized in stories about the Old West, published an article about Wyatt in 1955 in Argosy Magazine. He called Wyatt Earp a coward and murderer, and manufactured evidence to support his allegations.[133] He also wrote, using the pseudonyms "George Carleton Mays" and "J. S. Qualey", for the Western magazine Real West. His stores were filled with sensational claims about Wyatt Earp's villainy, and he made up fake letters to the editor from supposed "old-timers" to corroborate this story.[133]

Frank Waters interviewed Virgil Earp's widow, Allie Sullivan Earp, to write The Earp Brothers of Tombstone. Allie Earp was so upset by the way Waters distorted and manipulated her words that she threatened to shoot him.[242][243] His writing was so contentious and disputed that he waited until 13 years after her death to publish the book. In it, Waters vociferously berated Wyatt:

Wyatt was an itinerant saloonkeeper, cardsharp, gunman, bigamist, church deacon, policeman, bunco artist, and a supreme confidence man. A lifelong exhibitionist ridiculed alike by members of his own family, neighbors, contemporaries, and the public press, he lived his last years in poverty, still vainly trying to find someone to publicize his life, and died two years before his fictitious biography recast him in the role of America's most famous frontier marshal.[244]

Purportedly quoting Allie, he invented bitter public fights between Mattie and Wyatt, and told how Wyatt's affair with Sadie Marcus, "the slut of Tombstone," had humiliated Mattie. He condemned the Earp brothers' character and called them names.[98][242]

Waters used Allie Earp's anecdotes as a frame for adding a narrative and "building a case, essentially piling quote upon quote to prove that Wyatt Earp was a con man, thief, robber, and eventually murderer".[245] The book "further embroidered upon Frank Waters's imaginings about Wyatt's adulterous affair" with Josephine.[242] It was described by one reviewer as "a smear campaign levied against the Earp brothers".[242][243] Years later, he wrote a letter to the Arizona Historical Society in which he admitted that he had combined Allie's words to create a "cold, objective analysis" and "expose" of the whole subject.[98]

S. J. Reidhead, author of Travesty: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed, spent nearly a decade searching for Water's original manuscript, researching him, his background, and his bias against the Earps. In doing so, the author discovered that the story Waters presented against the Earps was primarily fictitious. "Nothing is documented", she wrote. "There are no notes nor sourcing. There is only the original Tombstone Travesty manuscript and the final Earp Brothers of Tombstone. Because of his later reputation, few writers, even today, dare question Waters's motives. They also do not bother fact checking the Earp Brothers of Tombstone, which is so inaccurate it should be considered fiction, rather than fact."[246]

Writers and researchers opposing Earp use Frank Waters's Earp Brothers of Tombstone as their primary source for material that presents Wyatt Earp as something of a villainous monster, aided and abetted by his brothers who were almost brutes. Waters detested the Earps so badly that he presented a book that was terribly flawed, poorly edited, and brimming with prevarications. In his other work, Waters is poetic. In the Earp Brothers of Tombstone, he is little more than a tabloid hack, trying to slander someone he dislikes.[246] To date, no reason has been uncovered for the bias Frank Waters exhibited against Wyatt Earp and his brothers.[246]

In 1963, Ed Bartholomew published Wyatt Earp, The Untold Story followed by Wyatt Earp: Man and Myth in 1964. His books were strongly anti-Earp and attacked Wyatt Earp's image as a hero. Bartholomew went about this by reciting snippets of accumulated anti-Earp facts, rumors, gossip, and innuendo. Bartholomew's books started a trend of debunking Earp, and the academic community followed his lead, pursuing the image of Earp as a "fighting pimp".[133][247]

In reviewing Allen Barra's Inventing Wyatt Earp. His Life and Many Legends, William Urban, a professor of history at Monmouth College in Warren County, Illinois, pointed out a number of factual inaccuracies in the book. One inconsistency by Barra, pointed out by another reviewer, includes a description of the poker game the night before the shootout. Ike Clanton's account of the game (the only one that exists) gives the participants as John Behan, Virgil Earp, Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury, and a fifth man Ike did not recognize, while Barra wrote that Holliday had attended the game.[137]^: 115

Unlike most legendary lawmen of the American West, Earp was relatively unknown until Stuart N. Lake published the first biography of Wyatt Earp,[249]^{: 154–161} Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal in 1931,[35] two years after Earp died.[249] Lake portrayed Earp as a "Western superhero" who single-handedly cleaned up a town full of cowboy criminals.[222] In fact, Earp had been a stagecoach guard for Wells Fargo, a full-time gambler, a regular associate of prostitutes, and, occasionally, a lawman.[249]

Lake wrote the book with Earp's input,[250] but was only able to interview him eight times before Earp died,[251] during which Earp sketched out the "barest facts" of his life.[54] With very little information from Earp, Lake wrote the biography in the first person.[251]

Lake initially sought Earp out hoping to write a magazine article about him. Earp was also seeking a biographer at about the same time. Aged 80 years, Earp was concerned that his vantage point on the Tombstone story may be lost, and may have been financially motivated, as he had little income in his last years.[137]^: 115

During the interviews and in later correspondence, Josephine and Wyatt went to great lengths to keep her name out of Lake's book.[222] Lake wrote Earp that he planned to send portions of the book to his New York agent, but Earp objected because he wanted to read it first.[252] After Earp's death on January 13, 1929, Josephine continued to try to persuade Lake to leave her and Earp's former wife, Mattie Blaylock, out of the book, even threatening legal action.[249][253] Lake finally published Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal in 1931, two years after Earp's death.[227]

Lake's creative biography portrays Earp as a "Western superhero",[222] "gallant white knight",[227] and entirely avoided mentioning Josephine Earp or Blaylock. A number of Hollywood movies have been directly and indirectly influenced by Lake's book and its depiction of Earp's role as a western lawman.[249] The book drew considerable positive attention and established Lake as a western screenwriter for years to come.[241]^: 36 It also established the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the public consciousness and Earp as a fearless lawman in the American Old West.[227]

The book "is now regarded more as fiction than fact",[227] and "an imaginative hoax, a fabrication mixed with just enough fact to give it credibility".[249]

Josephine Earp worked hard to create an image of Wyatt as a teetotaler,[254] but as a saloon owner and gambler, he drank occasionally. When Flood and Lake wrote their biographies, Prohibition was in force. Among the facts Josephine wanted scrubbed from Earp's history, was that he liked a drink. She persuaded biographers Flood, Lake, and Burns to write that Earp was a non-drinker. A good friend of Earp's, Charlie Welsh, was known to disappear for days at a time "to see property", the family euphemism for a drinking binge, and Earp was his regular partner.[98]^: 117 Director John Ford said that whenever Josephine left town for religious conventions, Earp would come into town, play poker, and get drunk with the cowboy actors.[255]

Lake wrote about the Colt Buntline Special, a variant of the long-barreled Colt Single Action Army revolver. According to Lake's biography, dime novelist Ned Buntline had five Buntline Specials commissioned. Lake described them as extra-long Colt Single Action Army revolvers with 12-inch (300 mm) barrels. Buntline was supposed to have presented them to lawmen in thanks for their help with contributing "local color" to his western yarns. According to Lake, the revolver was equipped with a detachable metal shoulder stock. Lake wrote that Earp and four other well-known western lawmen—Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, Charlie Bassett and Neal Brown—each received a Buntline Special. However, neither Tilghman nor Brown were lawmen then.[54]

Researchers have never found any record of such an order received by the Colt company, and Ned Buntline's alleged connections to Earp's have been largely discredited.[54]

After the publication of Lake's book, various Colt revolvers with long (10" or 16") barrels were referred to as "Colt Buntlines". Colt re-introduced the revolvers in its second generation revolvers produced after 1956. The Buntline Special was further popularized by The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp television series.[54]

Earp's reputation has been confused by inaccurate, conflicting, and false stories told about him by others, and by his own claims that cannot be corroborated. For example, in an interview with a reporter in Denver in 1896, he denied that he had killed Johnny Ringo.[256] He then flipped his story, claiming he had killed Ringo. In 1888, he was interviewed by an agent of California historian Hubert H. Bancroft, and Earp claimed that he had killed "over a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves".[132] In about 1918 he told Forrestine Hooker, who wrote an unpublished manuscript,[256] and then Frank Lockwood, who wrote Pioneer Days in Arizona in 1932,[257] that he was the one who killed Johnny Ringo as he left Arizona in March 1882, almost four months before Ringo was found dead with a bullet wound to the temple.[258] Earp also included details that do not match what is known about Ringo's death. Earp repeated that claim to at least three other people.[259]

At the hearing following the Tombstone shootout, Earp said he had been marshal in Dodge City, a claim he repeated in an August 16, 1896, interview that appeared in The San Francisco Examiner. But Earp had only been an assistant city marshal there.[260]

During an interview with his future biographer Stuart Lake during the late 1920s, Earp said that he arrested notorious gunslinger Ben Thompson in Ellsworth, Kansas, on August 15, 1873, when news accounts and Thompson's own contemporary account about the episode do not mention his presence.[261] He also told Lake that he had hunted buffalo during 1871 and 1872, but Earp was arrested three times in the Peoria area during that period for "Keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame."[37] He was arrested and jailed on a horse theft charge on April 6, 1871. However he was not convicted of the last charge and was released.[228]

In the same interview, Earp claimed that George Hoyt had intended to kill him, although newspaper accounts from that time report differently.[54] He also said he and Bat Masterson had confronted Clay Allison when he was sent to Dodge City to finish George Hoyt's job, and that they had forced him to back down.[262] Two other accounts contradicted Earp, crediting cattleman Dick McNulty and Long Branch Saloon owner Chalk Beeson with convincing Allison and his cowboys to surrender their guns. Cowboy Charlie Siringo witnessed the incident and left a written account.[262][263][264]

Wyatt outlived his brothers, and due to the fame Wyatt gained from Lake's biography and later adaptations of it, he is often mistakenly viewed as the central character and hero of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.[1] In fact, Virgil Earp, as Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal, actually held the legal authority in Tombstone the day of the shootout.[1][209] Virgil had considerably more experience with weapons and combat as a Union soldier in the Civil War, and in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal than did Wyatt.[265] As city marshal, Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. Wyatt was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother.[115]

Earp's modern-day reputation is that of the Old West's "toughest and deadliest gunman of his day".[261] He is "a cultural icon, a man of law and order, a mythic figure of a West where social control and order were notably absent".[266] Due to Lake's fanciful biography and because Wyatt outlived all of his brothers, his name became famous and he is the primary figure in many movies, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction.[267]^: 207

Western historian and author John Boessenecker describes Earp:

[He was an] enigmatic figure  ... He always lived on the outer fringe of respectable society, and his closest companions were gamblers and sporting men  ... Wyatt never set down roots in any one place; when the money stopped coming in or his problems became too great, he would pull up stakes and move on to the next boomtown  ... For his entire life was a gamble, an effort to make money without working hard for it, to succeed quickly without ever settling in for the long haul.[108]^: 178

One of the most well known, and for many years respected, books about Wyatt Earp was the book I Married Wyatt Earp, originally credited as a factual memoir by Josephine Marcus Earp. Published in 1976, it was edited by amateur historian Glenn Boyer,[268]^: 4[269] and published by the respected University of Arizona Press. It was immensely popular for many years, capturing the imagination of people with an interest in western history, studied in classrooms, cited by scholars,[270]^: 50 and relied upon as factual by filmmakers.[271]

In 1998, writer Tony Ortega wrote a lengthy investigative article for the Phoenix New Times for which he interviewed Boyer. Boyer said that he was uninterested in what others thought of the accuracy of what he had written. "This is an artistic effort. I don't have to adhere to the kind of jacket that these people are putting on me. I am not a historian. I'm a storyteller."[272]^: 2Boyer admitted that the book is "100 percent Boyer".[271] He said the book was not really a first-person account, that he had interpreted Wyatt Earp in Josephine's voice, and admitted that he could not produce any documents to vindicate his methods.[271]

The credibility of Boyer and the University Press was severely damaged. In 2000, the university referred all questions to its lawyers who investigated some of the allegations about Boyer's work.[269] Later that year, the Press removed the book from its catalog.[273] The book has been discredited as a fraud and a hoax[272] that cannot be relied on.[1]^: 154

As a result, other works by Boyer were subsequently questioned. His book, Wyatt Earp's Tombstone Vendetta, published in 1993, was according to Boyer based on an account written by a previously unknown Tombstone journalist that he named "Theodore Ten Eyck", but whose identity could not be independently verified. Boyer claimed that the manuscript was "clearly authentic" and that it contained "fascinating revelations (if they are true) and would make an ace movie".[274]^: 6 Boyer later said the character was in fact a blend of "scores of accounts", but could not provide any sources.[275]

History professor William Urban also described "the questionable scholarship of Glenn Boyer, the dominant figure in Earpiana for the past several decades, who has apparently invented a manuscript and then cited it as a major source in his publications. This does not surprise this reviewer, who has personal experience with Boyer's pretentious exaggeration of his acquaintance with Warren County records."[276]