Wyatt Earp: Dodge City to Tombstone

In May 1878 Wyatt Earp came back to Dodge City as assistant marshal, at $75 a month under Charlie Bassett. That summer Ed Morrison and about two dozen cowboys galloped down Front Street, shot up the town and stormed into the Long Branch Saloon. Wyatt burst in to find guns pointed at him. Doc Holliday, playing cards in the back, put a pistol to Morrison's head and forced the men to disarm. Wyatt credited Doc with saving his life, and the two became lifelong friends. A rebuilt Long Branch now stands in the Boot Hill Museum complex.

Precisión del lugar: The original saloon is gone; the pin marks the Boot Hill Museum, where a rebuilt Long Branch stands.

Para el visitante: The Boot Hill Museum complex in Dodge City includes a rebuilt Long Branch Saloon.

In January 1881 saloon owner Milt Joyce gave Wyatt a quarter-interest in the faro concession at the Oriental Saloon, in return for managing the tables and keeping order. Gambling was then a respectable profession in Tombstone. On 8 October 1881 Doc Holliday got into a dispute here with the outlaw John Tyler. When Tyler started a fight after losing a bet, Wyatt threw him out. Eighteen days later the feud with the Cowboys came to a head in the street.

Precisión del lugar: The pin is a map-search result for the saloon; the exact building is not confirmed from the sources used.

Doc Holliday was sleeping at C. S. Fly's boarding house when Ike Clanton came looking for him with a rifle. On 26 October 1881 the Cowboys walked out the back of the O.K. Corral and stopped in a narrow, empty lot next to Fly's. Virgil Earp stood a few feet inside the lot, and Wyatt behind him near the corner of the boarding house. The gunfight lasted less than a minute, and became an archetype of the American Old West.

Precisión del lugar: The fight was in a vacant lot beside Fly's boarding house, not in the O.K. Corral itself; no pin is given for the lot.

The Tombstone cemetery that became Boothill holds the graves of Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Tom McLaury, the three men killed in the gunfight. Believed to hold over 300 people, it closed in late 1886 when a new city cemetery opened, and was neglected afterwards. Many wooden markers were lost to neglect and to souvenir hunters. Today it is a stop on most visits to Tombstone, open to the public for a small entry fee.

Para el visitante: Open to the public; there is a small entry fee.

The gunfight was not the end of the conflict. On 18 March 1882 Morgan Earp was playing billiards when a Cowboy fired from a dark alley through the glass door of Campbell & Hatch's saloon and billiard parlor. The bullet shattered his spine and lodged in the thigh of George Berry, a bystander. The suspects furnished alibis supplied by other Cowboys. The next day Wyatt formed a posse.

Precisión del lugar: The sources name the parlor but not its exact site; no pin is given.

Wyatt's posse took Morgan's body to the railhead in Benson, then guarded Virgil and his wife Allie on the way to Tucson, where Cowboys were said to be waiting to kill Virgil. The next morning Frank Stilwell's body was found alongside the tracks with a shotgun bullet in his chest. A coroner's jury named him as one of Morgan's assassins. Wyatt's movements now drew national press coverage, and he soon left Arizona.

Precisión del lugar: The sources say only that the body lay alongside the tracks in Tucson; the pin marks the Tucson station area.