Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  When Ed Schieffelin went prospecting in southern Arizona, he was told by soldiers at Fort Huachuca that all he'd find would be his tombstone. With Apaches roaming the hills and long stretches of desert, the area was simply too dangerous for one man alone. But Schieffelin, with his long beard, waves of black hair, and tattered, patched clothing, made his strike. Filing the claim in the fall of 1877, he recalled the soldiers' warnings and gave the locations as Tombstone and Graveyard. Schieffelin collected a few rock specimens and was down to 30 cents in his pocket when he arrived at the Signal mine in northwestern Arizona where his brother, Al, worked. Al Schieffelin showed three of the samples to Richard Gird, the assayer at the Signal. After looking at two of the three, Gird supposedly said, "The best thing you can do is to find out where that ore came from, and take me with you and start for the place." The third sample tested out even richer, at $2,000 to the ton. Gird and the two Schieffelins returned to the site quickly and Ed made his biggest strike, a silver vein so rich he could press a coin into it and leave an exact imprint. Gird assayed the sample from this location at $15,000 to the ton, and supposedly said, "Ed, you lucky cuss-you have hit it." The mine was called the Lucky Cuss. It turned out to be a small vein, but the Tough Nut, Grand Central, and Contention all proved bigger strikes, and the rush began to America's new mining center. Miners would be followed by merchants, gamblers, and prostitutes also seeking their fortunes in the frontier boomtowns, if not with the turn of a shovel, then perhaps on the turn of a card or the growth of a business. It had happened in the rushes of California, Virginia City, and Pikes Peak before, and it would all burst forth again in a Tombstone filled with hope and promise.

  The first-rush boomers pitched their tents and built their shacks atop a hill that rose from a plain of tall grama grass. In one direction, they could look out upon the mighty rock formation called Cachise's Stronghold, where the Apache leader later called Cochise had eluded capture by cavalry troops. Turning in the other direction, the miners could look past the miles of grassland to the Huachuca Mountains, standing like temples in the desert; far in the distance stood the taller San Joses across the border in Mexico. The first silver rush brought miners and the elements that fed off them-gamblers, prostitutes, and whiskey peddlers. Merchants and settlers who would replace the tents with buildings and turn the rough settlement into a community soon followed.

  Tombstone sprang up so quickly there was little room for planning. Almost immediately a scandal erupted with a force that struck just about everyone in town. In March of 1879, five men organized the Tombstone Town Site Company, ostensibly to establish proper title to the town's lots, many already occupied by buildings that were going up in a haze of sawdust. The founders of the Town Site Company knew that controlling real estate in a boomtown would be almost as lucrative as owning a silver mine, and far more secure. Their moves, though of questionable ethics, had some legal basis under the laws of that time. Soon after its founding, original member James S. Clark and an associate named Mike Gray, a local justice of the peace, bought out the other members of the company. The company would approach the owners of the lots and offer to sell clear title with the price based on the value of improvements, which, of course, the owner had done himself. In essence, the Town Site Company was selling the property back to the landowners. There were stories, though unverified, that an owner who refused payment would be visited by local thugs acting as enforcers. Much to the shock and outright anger of the townsmen, Mayor Alder Randall and the town council backed the Town Site Company and provided official sanction. The real estate mess would constantly be hanging over Tombstone, tearing apart its political structure and dividing the residents into separate camps.

  Clark and Gray were scorned by some and respected by others. Irate citizens assailed them in public and threatened their lives. It was the first big political issue in town and proved to be an ongoing controversy. Tombstone's first newspaper, the Nugget, started on October 2, 1879, virtually avoided the issue as editor Artemus Fay simply chronicled events without engaging in controversy. A few months later, on May 1, 1880, fiery young editor John Clum brought a more adversarial style of journalism to town when he opened the Epitaph with the financial backing of Richard Gird, the former assayer now wealthy from his share of the mines. Clum, with experience both as the Indian agent at San Carlos and as the former editor of the Tuceon Citizen, mounted a crusade against the Town Site group and condemned Mayor Randall for signing the Town Site documents.

  Tombstone and several smaller mining camps sprouted in the southern end of huge Pima County, about seventy-five miles of rough road from the county seat of Tucson. Pima officials had little reason to pay attention to the wild, remote regions to the south until the new camps demanded courts, government, and police. Almost from the start, policing became a problem in an area that drew misfits of all types. Law enforcement had three tiers: the county sheriff held jurisdiction over all crimes in the district and county; the city marshal, an elected official, was responsible for the village of Tombstone; and the U.S. marshal had authority over such federal offenses as stagecoach robberies and violation of the mails. Jurisdictions often overlapped, officers disagreed over their responsibilities; the situation was primed for chaos. This structure helped make Tombstone one of the most intriguingly complicated stories in frontier history. At different times, the lawbreakers were the lawmen, and the line between good and evil blurred in the eyes of the community.

  Into this maelstrom of opportunity and excitement came Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, carrying some reputation from Kansas as a tough, competent lawman. At 31, he had filled out into a lean, powerful man with sandy blond hair and a drooping mustache. He owned a booming, authoritative voice, so deep it seemed almost a growl, and a self-assured swagger that as many men would find irritating as would find uplifting. Wyatt and Mattie left Dodge in early September, accompanied by brother Jim, his wife Bessie, and two children from Bessie's earlier marriage. They stopped briefly in then-booming Las Vegas, New Mexico, to collect Doc Holliday and Big-Nose Kate. Doc had run a gambling house and gotten into some trouble for killing a gambler named Mike Gordon in July, but was not convicted. The party went on to Prescott, Arizona, to meet up with Virgil, now 36, a town constable who had earned a reputation of his own for participating in a shootout against two Texas desperadoes. Wyatt and Virgil looked so much alike that even acquaintances would confuse the two. Jim, 38, the wounded Civil War veteran, was shorter and slightly darker than his brothers. Kate liked Prescott, and she and Doc decided to remain. The Earps had come West for opportunity, and all the talk was of the burgeoning little boomtown down near the border. Wyatt, Jim, Virgil, and their wives outfitted their wagons and headed south, into the most promising silver field in America.

  Wyatt Earp brought with him a wagon he planned to convert to a stagecoach. "I intended to start a stage line when I first started out from Dodge City," Earp said in a 1925 court deposition. "But when I got there I found there was two stage lines and so I finally sold my outfit to one of the companies, to a man named Kinnear."' He found the two established stage lines-Kinnear's and Ohnesorgen & Walker-in the midst of a price war that had led to passenger rates being cut to $4 for the trip from Benson to Tombstone, hardly enough to make the run profitable.2 The Earps realized quickly there would be no future in stage coaches, so they sought their fortunes in whatever appeared most fruitful, whether gambling or speculating in mining claims or real estate. Virgil had already chosen another path. Before leaving Prescott, Virgil visited U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake and received the appointment of deputy U.S. marshal, a prestigious though low-paying position in which his job was basically to support other local agencies and investigate crimes against federal law.

  There was a freshness about Tombstone when the Earps arrived in the final weeks of 1879, their wagons loaded with supplies to start a new life. They found a village of about nine hundred residents with far more tents than buildings. Already the gambling parlors were running full bore, filled
with the smells of wood-stove heat, whiskey, and tobacco smoke and the sounds of men yelling numbers, punctuated by the occasional cry of "Keno!" A large tent housed a dance hall with four bored-looking women taking turns entertaining the miners. Freighters carried fresh lumber from the distant mountains for the legion of Tombstone craftsmen to turn into saloons, businesses, and cabins. All around was the banging of hammers and whuzzing of saws, cutting and crafting to build a boomtown. The village with the odd-sounding name had a constant bustle about it: noise, excitement, anticipation. Optimism always flowed as freely as whiskey, for only the most optimistic would chance their lives on an unproved hope of new riches.

  The Earps quickly went about staking mining claims, hoping one would become a big producer. The village grew rapidly around them as an army of boomers brought their hopes into the Arizona hills. Stagecoaches arrived daily with a dozen or more people jamming the rig and hanging from the top. They came to escape an economic depression that had hit much of the country; by 1878 more than eighteen thousand companies had gone out of business and many railroads were in receivership. In February of 1880 George Whitwell Parsons walked into town, bursting with visions of speculating on mines that would make his fortune. Parsons had another passion, keeping a diary that recorded the movements, emotions, and vibrancy of the town. Four months after Parsons arrived, Clara Spalding Brown came to Tombstone to keep house for her husband, mining engineer Theodore Brown, and to serve as correspondent for the San Diego Union. She promised her readers a "woman's view" of Tombstone and wound up describing bloodstains on the street.

  "Thinking a few notes regarding Tombstone and the journey thereto, from a woman's point of view, may be entertaining to some of the ladies of San Diego, I take this opportunity to address you," Brown wrote on July 7, 1880, her first dispatch. After describing a long, dusty trek to southern Arizona Territory, Brown told of what she found:

  We beheld an embryo city of canvas, frame and adobe, scattered over a slope.... It is a place more pretentious than I had imagined, and full of activity, notwithstanding the hundreds of loungers seen upon the streets. The only attractive places visible are the liquor and gambling saloons, which are everywhere present and are carpeted and comfortably furnished.

  The ladies of Tombstone are not so liberally provided with entertainment, and find little enjoyment aside from a stroll about town after sunset, the only comfortable time of the day. The camp is one of the dirtiest places in the world . . . and one is never sure of having a clean face, despite repeated ablutions. It is time to talk about dirt. The sod lies loose upon the surface, and is whirled into the air every day by a wind which almost amounts to a gale; it makes the eyes smart like the cinders from an engine; it penetrates into the houses, and covers everything with dust. I do not believe the famous Nebraska breeze can go ahead of the Tombstone zephyr.

  The mercury gallivants around in the nineties, with altogether too high-minded ideas. One could stand two or three days of that sort of thing with tolerable grace, but it taxes one's endurance to receive no quarter at all.... We cannot obtain desirable food for hot weather; fresh vegetables are scarce, and the few fruits in the markets require a very large purse.... The camp is considered a remarkably quiet one - only one murder since my arrival.... Religious services are held in a furniture store, and attended by the few who know when Sunday comes around; in about two months, an adobe church will be completed. As far as I can ascertain, every one from San Diego is doing well and making the best of everything. All feel that this is a place to stay in for a while; not a desirable spot for a permanent home.3

  From her first article, Clara Brown understood a critical point of life in southern Arizona. Tombstone would be a town of sojourners more than settlers; boomers who came to find fortune, then escape to more hospitable climes that offered such luxuries as fruits and vegetables. Most of the people who came to this desolate spot were not looking for a home in which to raise generations of little Browns or Parsonses-they were coming to make money then leave. This sojourner mentality would quickly establish an antagonism between the transitory townsfolk and the cattlemen who came to Arizona to build ranches and start families that would populate the Southwest for generations.

  Tombstone at first burst resembled the other mining towns of the time, filled mostly by rough men and the marginal characters who fed off them. It was an intemperate little town loaded with dust and toughs, typical of most mining communities where whiskey drew bigger crowds than God. But the town would change quickly and often, forever in transition. As early as 1880 a trickle had begun of a better-educated, refined element; mining engineers, lawyers, and political opportunists nestled into the growing village, to walk the streets filled with loungers and cardsharps. Parsons provides a good example of the new settler. A well-bred native of Washington, D.C., he grew up in Brooklyn, went West to work at a bank in San Francisco, then joined the boomers for the trek to Tombstone. The more refined settlers were a minuscule minority at first, living amid a world of roughneck miners and saloon dwellers.

  The sojourners found a wild country brimming with conflicts in waiting. The remnants of the Apache Nation were spread through the hills and on the San Carlos reservation, feeding a constant apprehension of attack; the unsavory loungers in town were not above fleecing miners in crooked card games or committing a few robberies; and the backcountry began filling with another breed of troublemaker, ruffians who rustled cattle and highwaymen who preyed on travelers using the roadways. Most of the boomers were so caught up in their rush to riches that they barely paid attention to the rising crime until the problems became immediate and demanded tough law enforcement.

  With the stage business already locked up, Wyatt Earp went back to work, as an employee, not a boss. He spent eight months carrying a shotgun and sitting atop other men's stagecoaches serving as a guard-called a shotgun messenger-for Wells, Fargo. With Virgil working as a deputy U.S. marshal, Jim tending bar, and Wyatt guarding shipments, the Earps settled into Tombstone. They had arrived seeking fortune, not wages, and they gambled and sought out opportunities by filing mining claims, amassing land holdings, and acquiring water rights. Wells, Fargo records, although incomplete, show that Wyatt had received only one month's full pay when he passed the job to veteran Wells, Fargo employee Bob Paul. Wyatt's brother Morgan, 29, arrived from the family home in California in mid-July, stepping in immediately as special deputy to his brothers and often filling in as a shotgun messenger. The youngest brother, Warren, 25, would occasionally move in and out of Tombstone as well. Always on the horizon was a mining claim that might hit or an investment that might pay off.

  The family set up residence in three houses on Fremont and First Streets, with three couples, plus two of Jim Earp's stepchildren from Bessie's first marriage, sharing the rooms. The families had come from a world of Western saloons and brothels, where moral codes were far less rigid than in the East. The boomers had better ways to spend their time than to speculate on the marital or nonmarital status of their neighbors. It is likely that only Jim and Bessie had enjoyed the formality of a marriage ceremony, though Wyatt and Mattie, Virgil and Allie, and later Morgan and Louisa were all living as husband and wife. Before Louisa's arrival, Morgan often bunked with a man named Fred Dodge, a sometime gambler and saloonkeeper who often rode with posses and generally sided with the Earps in most disputes. It was not for nearly half a century that Dodge would disclose to the Earps his true reason for residing in Tombstonehe was a secret agent for Wells, Fargo, sent to Tombstone to look after the company's business.4

  Such proper Easterners as Parsons found the situation shocking: a town almost devoid of traditional morality, with 24-hour-a-day saloons, brothels, and dance halls operating openly. For the men and women with frontier experience, this was business as usual, no wilder than most mining towns and certainly not as wicked as Dodge with its city-of-sin atmosphere. Early in his Tombstone tenure, Parsons sat down in moral shock to write: "How men of good family and connections East can c
ome here and marry prostitutes-take them out of a dance house-I can't see." 5 Men of good breeding and men of marginal breeding, such as the Earps, did take women out of dance halls, and they did lead lives outside the accepted bounds of morality, but morality was bent to accept the independence of this frontier free-love generation.

  Parsons found another sight even more disgusting. "This place holds some of the most depraved -entirely and totally so-that were ever known. I have seen hard cases before in a frontier oil town where but one or two women were thought respectable, but have never come across several such cases as are here. It would be impossible to speak here of some or one form of depravity I am sorry to know of-for bad as one can be and low as woman can fall-there is one form of sin here (fortunately confined to two persons) which would I almost believe bring a blush of shame to a prostitute's cheek. Such persons, if the facts were generally known it seems to me, would be run out of town. One of the two I saw tonight in the ball room; also other depraved women and men, of course. Others wore the garb and appearance of gentility. Good manners and good was, but there was a sad mixture."6 He apparently referred to the remarkable sight of a lesbian couple, something he had never seen in the East, or even in San Francisco.

  The Earp brothers and their common-law wives fit well into this loose lifestyle; they lived on the margins of society amid the world of saloons and brothels in a place where such pursuits were generally accepted. Jim's main occupation had always been as a saloon man, Wyatt aspired mostly to success, Morgan loved his good times, and Virgil seemed to have an honest commitment to law enforcement. These would not be the type of men invited to the fancy parties of high society in Boston or San Francisco, but they fit into a frontier society where most boomers accepted the differences. Even the proper Parsons would come to take men at their mettle.