The O.K. Corral is located in Tombstone, Arizona, a frontier silver-mining town in the American West established in 1879. Due to the prosperity of this boom town, various business, mining, and political interests competed for control over the town. The region’s booming silver mines soon attracted members of the Earp family, noted as both career lawmen and politically ambitious businessmen. Standing in staunch opposition to these lawmen were the cowboys, a group of cattle thieves or rustlers that openly pursued their business through violence and murder. Despite Tombstone’s success, tensions soon arose between these factions, culminating on October 26, 1881, with the notorious gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which, despite its name, took place in an abandoned lot between Fly’s Photography Studio and William Harwood’s house. This historic confrontation involved a group of local peace officers, including Wyatt Earp (1848–1929), Morgan Earp (1851–1882), and gunslinger John “Doc” Holliday (1851–1887), all led by Virgil Earp (1843–1905), on one side against members of the Clanton gang such as Tom McLaury (1853–1881), his brother Frank McLaury (1848–1881), Billy Clanton (1862–1881), and his brother Ike Clanton (1847–1887) on the other.
Tombstone, Arizona, not long after the legendary 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral. This mid-1880s’ image is the only known period photograph of the site of the start of the gunfight, which, despite its name began in an alley between Allen and Fremont streets. (AP Photo)
Despite passing as a relatively unremarkable event at the time in the United States, the events that took place during this fight have subsequently become inscribed in American frontier legend. Their portrayal, especially in the mid to late twentieth century, has been highly embellished and romanticized. As a result aspects of the encounter, such as rising regional tensions, outlaw gangs, notorious gamblers, dubious lawmen, and culminating gunfights have become the essential components of depictions of the American Wild West. These revised tales have led many Americans from the 1940s onward to increasingly romanticize the nineteenth-century western frontier as a period of unbounded freedom and self-sufficiency, without the interference of government. To these ends, the actions of the Earps and the Clantons have been utilized as a means of portraying and generalizing, often incorrectly, the American frontier experience. In this regard, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as it is popularly known in the twentieth century, is more the product of subsequent portrayals of the events in popular culture books, TV shows, and films rather than a reflection of the relatively unnoticed events of the period.
The gunfight in 1881 between the Earps and the Clantons was not an isolated incident, but instead was the culmination of months of rising tensions between the lawmen and cowboys in Arizona. Ongoing issues between Northern Republican businessmen and Southern Democratic ranchers, the political ambitions of Wyatt Earp and his plan to replace John Behan (1844–1912) as sheriff of Tombstone, the relationship between Behan and the Clanton gang, Virgil Earp’s role as city marshal in Tombstone, and Wyatt’s relationship with Behan’s mistress, Josephine Sarah Marcus (1861–1944), were all factors underlying these tensions. In addition, the developing feud between the Clanton gang and the Earps escalated in the wake of Curly Bill Brocius’s (1845–1882) killing of Tombstone marshal Fred White (1849–1880) on October 28, 1880, and the court’s subsequent dismissal of charges against Brocius.
The climax came on the night of October 25, 1881, when Ike Clanton began drinking, fueling his rising fears that an old arrangement he had with Wyatt Earp would become public knowledge. In particular, Clanton feared that Earp would expose him as the source of information for a federal investigation following a recent stagecoach robbery, and so began spreading rumors that he would kill one of the Earp brothers. After tense encounters and threats between the two sides over the course of a couple of days, town marshal Virgil Earp led the group to confront the Clantons and McLaurys in an alley next to Fly’s Photography Gallery just prior to 3 p.m. on October 26, 1881. En route, the group was intercepted by Sheriff Behan, who advised them against proceeding, stating that he had already defused the situation and disarmed the Clantons and McLaurys. Disregarding this advice, Virgil proceeded to the mouth of the alley and immediately informed the cowboys that he intended to disarm them. The resulting gunfire led Virgil, Morgan, and Doc to suffer injuries, while both of the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton were killed. Ike Clanton escaped after deceiving Wyatt Earp into believing that he was unarmed. While the results of the confrontation are known, the exact order of events throughout the brief encounter are often debated. Regardless, Behan immediately afterward sought to arrest Wyatt Earp for the outcome of events and was rebuffed.
In the days following the confrontation, Ike Clanton charged the Earps and Holliday with murder, but they were later exonerated by a judge and jury. Yet despite the results of the gunfight and the subsequent trial, the conflict between these two groups remained ongoing. On December 28, 1881, Virgil Earp was ambushed and crippled after being shot in the arm and later, on March 18, 1882, Morgan Earp was shot and killed while playing pool. In response, Wyatt Earp, now a U.S. marshal, began hunting members of the cowboy gang and is credited with having killed Frank Stillwell, Curly Bill Brocius, and Charlie Cruz.
Portrayals of the gunfight varied, with The Tombstone Epitaph and The Nugget giving different accounts. Regardless, popular reactions to the fight were mixed, with some believing the Earps to be heroes, while others maintaining that earnest ranchers had been murdered in the streets by a politically ambitious family. The Earps maintained that they had only sought to enforce local ordinances and laws. What is clear is that in contrast with later portrayals, and despite the coverage of these events by regional newspapers, these events, for the most part, passed unnoticed at the time and remained largely unknown throughout America. Neither the conflict, its results, nor the trial afterward altered America’s perception of the western frontier at that time.
The Hangin’ Judge
Perhaps best evoked in the modern American imagination by the 1972 film The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, starring Paul Newman in the title role, the Hangin’ Judge is an archetype of the Old West who is stern in direct proportion to the wildness of the “Wild West” around him: where lawlessness is rampant, the Hangin’ Judge imposes the letter of the law with a firm hand. Although Roy Bean styled himself “The Law West of the Pecos” from the judge’s seat in his saloon, he—the cinematic license of director John Huston notwithstanding—never sentenced a man to death. Judges who lived up to the legendary epithet were legion, however, if slightly less well known today.
C. Fee
Indeed, the now legendary gunfight was not well known to the American public until the publication of Stuart Lake’s (1889–1964) biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931), which was both highly popular and largely fictionalized. Yet Lake’s publication, along with the works of other authors such as Zane Grey (1872–1939), soon captured the public’s imagination in the 1940s and 1950s, promoting nostalgia for gold rush boomtowns and the American frontier. This interest in the “Wild West” and the frontier was soon the focus of America’s popular culture, including comics, magazines, books, films, and TV shows, which highlighted heroic figures in stories that most readers could easily imagine. The image and mythos further arose from filmed recreations of the events, such as John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Hour of the Gun (1967), Doc (1971), Tombstone (1993), and Wyatt Earp (1994). In particular, it was the release of the movie Gunfight at the O.K. Corral that has led to the shootout being wrongfully attributed to this location. Such productions quickly transformed the Earps and the Clantons into central aspects of the American western frontier. In particular, Tombstone and the relationships between the lawmen and the cowboy gang came to symbolize the lawlessness and violence of the American West in its early development. In this regard, the legend and mythology regarding the Earps and the fight at the O.K. Corral are the result of a tale being retold, exaggerated, and distorted by newspapers and fictional accounts, which proliferated in the mid-twentieth century throughout the United States.
Sean Morton
See also Bass, Sam; Boles, Charles E. “Black Bart”; Bonney, William “Billy the Kid”; Carson, Kit; Outlaw Heroes; Parker, Robert Leroy “Butch Cassidy”
Further Reading
Barra, Allen. 1998. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. New York: Carroll and Graf.
Lake, Stuart. 1931. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Marks, Paula Mitchell. 1989. And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight. New York: Morrow.
Sheridan, Thomas. 1996. Arizona: A History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Tefertiller, Casey. 1997. Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral—Primary Document
Wyatt Earp’s Testimony on the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881)
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881 helped to create the popular myth of the “Wild West.” This myth depicts the nineteenth-century western frontier as a place of chaotic violence among outlaws and vigilantes. The thirty-second shootout, which left three dead, evolved out of a long-simmering conflict between the McLaury/Clanton gang and the Earps with their respective associates. This document, part of Wyatt Earp’s statement, was generated by an investigation into the shootings, which ultimately failed to produce enough evidence to indict the Earps on charges of murder.
Statement of Wyatt S. Earp in the Preliminary Hearing in the Earp-Holliday Case, Heard before Judge Wells Spicer
November 16, 1881
We four [Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday] started through Fourth to Fremont Street. When we turned the comer of Fourth and Fremont we could see them standing near or about the vacant space between Fly’s photograph gallery and the next building west. I first saw Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton and Sheriff Behan standing there. We went down the left-hand side of Fremont Street.
When we got within about 150 feet of them I saw Ike Clanton and Billy Clanton and another party. We had walked a few steps further and I saw Behan leave the party and come toward us. Every few steps he would look back as if he apprehended danger. I heard him say to Virgil Earp, “For God’s sake, don’t go down there, you will get murdered!” Virgil Earp replied, “I am going to disarm them,” he, Virgil, being in the lead. When I and Morgan came up to Behan, he said, “I have disarmed them.” When he said this, I took my pistol, which I had in my hand, under my coat, and put it in my overcoat pocket. Behan then passed up the street, and we walked on down.
We came up on them close; Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton standing in a row against the east side of the building on the opposite side of the vacant space west of Fly’s photograph gallery. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne and a man I don’t know were standing in the vacant space about halfway between the photograph gallery and the next building west.
I saw that Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury had their hands by their sides, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton’s six-shooters were in plain sight. Virgil said, “Throw up your hands; I have come to disarm you!” Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury laid their hands on their six-shooters. Virgil said, “Hold, I don’t mean that! I have come to disarm you!” Then Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury commenced to draw their pistols. At the same time, Tom McLaury throwed his hand to his right hip, throwing his coat open like this, [showing how] and jumped behind his horse. [Actually it was Billy Clanton’s horse.]
I had my pistol in my overcoat pocket, where I had put it when Behan told us he had disarmed the other parties. When I saw Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury draw their pistols, I drew my pistol. Billy Clanton leveled his pistol at me, but I did not aim at him. I knew that Frank McLaury had the reputation of being a good shot and a dangerous man, and I aimed at Frank McLaury. The first two shots were fired by Billy Clanton and myself, he shooting at me, and I shooting at Frank McLaury. I don’t know which was fired first. We fired almost together. The fight then became general. After about four shots were fired, Ike Clanton ran up and grabbed my left arm. I could see no weapon in his hand, and thought at the time he had none, and so I said to him, “The fight had commenced. Go to fighting or get away,” at the same time pushing him off with my left hand, like this. He started and ran down the side of the building and disappeared between the lodging house and photograph gallery.
My first shot struck Frank McLaury in the belly. He staggered off on the sidewalk but fired one shot at me. When we told them to throw up their hands Claiborne threw up his left hand and broke and ran. I never saw him afterwards until late in the afternoon, after the fight. I never drew my pistol or made a motion to shoot until after Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury drew their pistols. If Tom McLaury was unarmed, I did not know it, I believe he was armed and fired two shots at our party before Holliday, who had the shotgun, fired and killed him. If he was unarmed, there was nothing in the circumstances or in what had been communicated to me, or in his acts or threats, that would have led me even to suspect his being unarmed.
I never fired at Ike Clanton, even after the shooting commenced, because I thought he was unarmed. I believed then, and believe now, from the acts I have stated and the threats I have related and the other threats communicated to me by other persons as having been made by Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Ike Clanton, that these men last named had formed a conspiracy to murder my brothers, Morgan and Virgil, Doc Holliday and myself. I believe I would have been legally and morally justified in shooting any of them on sight, but I did not do so, nor attempt to do so. I sought no advantage when I went as deputy marshal [city marshal] to help disarm them and arrest them. I went as a part of my duty and under the direction of my brother, the marshal; I did not intend to fight unless it became necessary in self-defense and in the performance of official duty. When Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury drew their pistols, I knew it was a fight for life, and I drew in defense of my own life and the lives of my brothers and Doc Holliday.
Source: Cochise County Case No. 48, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. Ordinances Relevant in the Preliminary Hearing in the Earp-Holliday Case, Heard before Judge Wells Spicer, November 1881. Available online at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/earp/wearptestimony.html.