Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp, and his brothers Morgan and Virgil faced off against the Clanton gang in one of the most prolific gunfights in American history back on October 26, 1881. The legendary shootout took place at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona at 3:00pm. Tombstone had become a booming town shortly after silver was discovered back in 1877 and the town had attracted some very interesting characters.
Things had gotten a bit wild so the town folk sought the help of Wyatt Earp and his brothers Virgil and Morgan and good friend John Henry “Doc” Holliday to bring about a little “law and order”. Historians say the Earp’s and Holiday were certainly not a group to doubt and would often shoot first and ask questions later. On the flip side, the Clantons and McLaurys were a rough group of cowboys who lived on a ranch outside of town and sidelined as cattle rustlers and thieves.
In October 1881, the struggle between these two groups really started to escalate and the afternoon of October 26, Ike Clanton’s brother Billy rode into town to join the party, along with Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they ran into in the local saloon was Doc Holliday, who was delighted to inform them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps a while earlier. Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.
A couple of hours later the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the Clanton gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral, which was located at the end of Fremont Street. Though it’s still debated who fired the first shot, most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point-blank in the chest killing him, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury’s chest killing him. Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank McLaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton.
When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne had run for the hills. Ironically a higher county Sheriff charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were “fully justified in committing these homicides.”
Following the Tombstone shootout and trials, Virgil Earp was maimed by hidden assailants and Morgan Earp was murdered. Unable to get justice through the courts, Wyatt Earp took matters into his own hands. In the process, and acting as Deputy U.S. Marshal, Wyatt Earp, formally deputized Holliday and others and as a federal posse, they pursued the outlaw cowboys they believed were responsible.
The Earp party guarded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie on their way to the train for California. In Tucson, the group spotted an armed Frank Stilwell and Ike Clanton, whom they thought were lying in wait to kill Virgil. A few days later, Frank Stilwell’s body was found at dawn alongside the railroad tracks, riddled with gunshot wounds. Wyatt credited himself as the one who fatally shot Stilwell with a shotgun; other bullets placed into him may have been fired by Doc Holliday. The Earp posse killed another three during late March and early April, 1882.
By mid-May, Holliday was arrested in Denver on a Tucson warrant for murdering Frank Stilwell. When Wyatt Earp learned of the charges, he feared his friend Holliday would not receive a fair trial in Arizona. Earp asked his friend Bat Masterson, Chief of Police of Trinidad, Colorado, to help get Holliday released. Holiday was then charged with a couple of crimes in Denver and not allowed to leave the state. Holiday spent the remaining few years of his life in Colorado and died in his bed at the Glenwood Springs Hotel of tuberculosis at age 36.
As for Wyatt Earp, he remained a lifelong gambler and was always looking for a quick way to make a buck. After leaving Tombstone, Earp went to San Francisco where he reunited with Josephine Earp. She became his common-law wife. They joined a gold rush to Eagle City, Idaho, where they owned mining interests and a saloon. They left there to race horses and open a salon during a real estate boom in San Diego, California. They moved briefly to Yuma, Arizona before they joined the Alaskan Gold Rush to Nome, Alaska. They opened the biggest saloon in town and made a large sum of money. Returning to the lower 48, they opened another saloon in Tonopah, Nevada, the site of a new gold find.
In about 1911, Earp began slowing down and actually retired with Josephine to Los Angeles. Wyatt Earp passed away at the age of 80 in 1929. Many historians say Wyatt Earp definitely got his money’s worth out of life, don’t forget he also had some wild times in his younger years back in Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas.
And what about the “Huckleberry”… For what it’s worth, down south in Georgia, where Doc Holiday originated, the men who would bear (carry) your coffin in a funeral procession wore “small huckleberry branches” in their lapels. They became known as the “Huckle Bearers”. When Doc says “I’m your huckleberry” in the movie Tombstone, he means that he is your coffin bearer or more to the point, he will be just the man to put you in your coffin! (Source: Wild West, Wiki, History)
