Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp is arguably the most famous lawman of the Old West. He gained his reputation in the towns of Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas.

Wyatt was born in Illinois in 1848 and moved with his family to Southern California in 1864 where he worked on the railroad and as a teamster. In 1870 he went back East and got married. His bride died suddenly which sent him out onto the Great Plains - still Indian Territory, of course - where he occupied himself as a buffalo hunter and stagecoach driver. The year 1875 saw him enter the town of Wichita where he became a member of the local police force. A year later he became assistant marshal in Dodge City as well as being hired by the Long Branch Saloon as a faro dealer. Here is where his lifelong friendships with Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson began.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19, 1848. He is the son of Nicholas Earp, a lawyer/farmer, and Virginia Earp and was born at 406 South Third Street, Monmouth, Illinois. Wyatt was given the name of his father's Army captain.

When Wyatt was quite young, his two older brothers, James and Virgil, went off to fight in the Civil War for the Union. A story is told in which Wyatt tried to run away and join the Army, but his father caught him in a corn field and took him back to the house.

As a young man Earp was a stagecoach driver, railroad construction worker, surveyor, buffalo hunter, and policeman. In his early adulthood, Wyatt married and his wife died shortly after of Typhoid fever. Wyatt was devastated and went off and got into some trouble for horse stealing. Later, he became a stagecoach driver and traveled to Los Angeles, CA and Prescott, Arizona. Wyatt also hunted buffalo for some time. There are rumors that it was during this time that Wyatt met Bat Masterson.

In 1876 he became chief deputy marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, a lawless frontier town. Within a year, having brought relative peace to Dodge City, he moved on to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory.

In the fall of 1879, Wyatt and his brothers Morgan and Virgil journeyed by horseback down to Tombstone, Arizona. There he furthered his reputation as a gunfighter, first as deputy sheriff of Pima Co. and later as deputy U.S. marshal for the entire Arizona Territory. Earp and three of his brothers, together with the American frontiersman Doc Holliday, participated in the famous O.K. Corral gunfight in 1881, during which they killed several suspected cattle rustlers.

The following year, Ike Clanton attempted to kill Wyatt and Morgan while they were playing pool; Morgan was killed. Wyatt killed Frank Stilwell and became a wanted man. He and Doc Holliday left Tombstone shortly thereafter.

Throughout the next several years, Wyatt bought and sold real estate, had many adventures with Josephine Marcus, and prospected and mined gold. He eventually ended up in California working in the motion picture industry.

On January 13, 1929, Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles California, at the age of 80.