The Life of Wyatt Earp: Straight Shooting American Icon

The life of Wyatt Earp was jam-packed full of action, filling his 80 years with more than many could over a number of lifetimes.

“There’s nothing so sacred as honor, and nothing so loyal as love!”

The words above are carved into the headstone of Earp; a man who was both an icon and an enigma.

On one hand: a brutal killer, a hustler, a gambler with a penchant for violence; a vigilante who chose to ignore the law.

On the other: a soft-spoken, fearless, pioneer; the man who tamed Tombstone and survived the Gunfight at the OK Corral; the part-time lawman who went where other Sheriffs were afraid to go; a living legend, from an extraordinary era in American history.

It’s surreal to think that Earp died less than a century ago (1929). His world, his America, so removed from anything we see in contemporary times. Today, the Wild West is a rodeo show, a movie, a tourist attraction, almost a myth.

But it was real. When Earp walked the dirt-covered streets of Deadwood and the wild city of Tombstone, life was cheap, wild, insane, and seriously dangerous.

So much so, that they have made more than 40 films and television shows about Wyatt’s remarkable early life, and the characters who inhabited it, including Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Big Nose Kate, Luke Short and Bat Masterton.

What is not so well known is how Earp spent his later years running casinos in San Diego, with Sunday trips to Tijuana, playing Big Wheel, rouge et noir, faro, monte, and thimblerig.

Gambling, hustling, grifting, mining gold, refereeing boxing matches, and dealing in real estate. Earp was a player to the end.

But before we get to the final chapters of Earp’s extraordinary life – let’s remind ourselves of who Wyatt Earp was, where he came from, and what exactly it takes to be a true Wild West hero.

Get into Dodge

The seeds of a legend were sown when Earp moved to Dodge City, Kansas, in 1875. It was billed as the ‘Wickedest Little City in the West’ and Earp was working there, both as a lawman and a professional gambler. It was the perfect fit.

It was here that he met prostitute then common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock, as well as another icon of the era: Doc Holliday, who famously saved his life in a saloon showdown which is now the stuff of legend.

As well as acting as the assistant sheriff, Earp hustled in the casinos and worked scores of dubious deals on the side.

But Dodge City started to lose its appeal. It was no longer a lawless nirvana for renegades and the scoundrels.

Wyatt’s brother Virgil wrote to him, saying: “In 1879, Dodge was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of reckless blood, and I decided to move to Tombstone, which was just building up a reputation.”

Tombstone was a town of tents and shacks. For the next ten years, Earp would make his money gambling, long before the best online betting sites existed.

He acted as a marshal, moving from boomtown to boomtown. Rarely staying in the same place for long.

He was known for having itchy feet. He would become bored, broke or unwelcome, and simply move on.

But you simply can’t talk about Earp’s early years, without mentioning his most legendary shootout. The Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Six lawmen, including Earp, faced off against nine rogue cowboys. In the end, three died, three were wounded, and two ran away. It’s such an iconic event that there are at least a dozen films and television series that tell the story.

Mid-Life Cowboy Chaos

By the age of 39, Earp had killed more than a dozen men and packed more into life than most can in many lifetimes. After his ventures into silver mining, he moved to San Diego, with his partner, soon-to-be-wife fourth and final wife, Josephine.

San Diego was the next boomtown. The railroad was coming and property prices were skyrocketing. Earp got in early. He bought four saloons and gambling halls, located in the infamous Stingaree District. It was an extremely dangerous part of town, renowned for “anarchists, confidence men, cutthroats, shady ladies, hopheads and thieves,” as a street poster of the time warned.

Earp offered his players a comprehensive selection of casino games. As well as blackjack, keno, and poker, you could risk it all on a high-stakes game of faro; by all accounts Earp’s preferred card game, when he wasn’t hustling unsuspecting Johns playing three-card monte.

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Horse Racing, Boxing and Gold

Did Earp finally settle down? Of course not. He won and bought racehorses. He refereed boxing fights in Mexico and California. He got married on a multimillionaire’s yacht.

But Earp wasn’t always on the up. He refereed in a fixed boxing match-up between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey and was heavily ridiculed by the press.

In response, he headed to San Francisco, and eventually Yukon, to join the Gold Rush. In records, his occupation is listed as ‘capitalist’.

There’s more: he opened a high-class brothel in Alaska, a saloon in Seattle, and hauled ore and supplies for a mining company in Nevada, as he looked for gold in Death Valley.

At the age of 62, he was employed by the Los Angeles Police Department to retrieve absconded criminals and it was the last time he was involved in a gunfight.

As early as twenty years before his death, Earp was advising movie directors about his life and the real Wild West. He was the advisor on many Wild West silent films and was desperate to have his life immortalized in a film.

He even supposedly met John Wayne while working as an extra and prop man. Wayne later claimed that he based his portrayals of Western lawmen on Earp.

In 1929, Earp died at the age of 80. His mythology, as a heroic lawman, is a long way from the reality of a hard, hustling, self-made, man.

He never had any children but his legacy is assured; a mix of hero and criminal, entrepreneur and hustler.

Exactly the type of man it took to tame the wild in the West.