162 Facts About Wyatt Earp

1.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone.

2.

Wyatt Earp was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother.

3.

In 1874, Wyatt Earp arrived in the boomtown of Wichita, Kansas where his reputed wife opened a brothel.

4.

Wyatt Earp was later appointed to the Wichita police force and developed a solid reputation as a lawman but was fined and "not rehired as a police officer" after getting into a physical altercation with a political opponent of his boss.

5.

Wyatt Earp immediately left Wichita, following his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas where his brother's wife Bessie and Wyatt Earp's common law wife Sally operated a brothel.

6.

In late 1878, he went to Texas to track down an outlaw and met John "Doc" Holliday, whom Wyatt Earp credited with saving his life.

7.

Wyatt Earp left Dodge in 1879 and moved with his brothers James and Virgil to Tombstone where a silver boom was underway.

8.

Wyatt Earp was never wounded in any of the gunfights, unlike his brothers Virgil and Morgan or Doc Holliday, which added to his mystique after his death.

9.

Back in San Francisco, Wyatt Earp raced horses, but his reputation suffered irreparably when he refereed the Fitzsimmons vs Sharkey boxing match and called a foul, which led many to believe he fixed the fight.

10.

Around 1911, Wyatt Earp began working several mining claims in Vidal, California, retiring in the hot summers with Josephine to one of several small, modest cottages they rented in Los Angeles.

11.

Wyatt Earp made friends among early Western actors in Hollywood and tried to get his story told, but he was portrayed during his lifetime only very briefly in one film: Wild Bill Hickok.

12.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19,1848, the fourth child of Nicholas Porter Earp and his second wife, Virginia Ann Cooksey.

13.

In March 1849, or in early 1850, Nicholas Wyatt Earp joined about a hundred other people in a plan to relocate to San Bernardino County, California, where he intended to buy farmland.

14.

Nicholas and Virginia Wyatt Earp's last child, Adelia, was born in June 1861 in Pella.

15.

Wyatt Earp was only 13 years old, too young to enlist, but he tried on several occasions to run away and join the army.

16.

On May 12,1864, Nicholas Wyatt Earp organized a wagon train and headed to San Bernardino, California, arriving on December 17.

17.

In spring 1866, Wyatt Earp became a teamster transporting cargo for Chris Taylor.

18.

In spring 1868 Wyatt Earp was hired to transport supplies needed to build the Union Pacific Railroad.

19.

Wyatt Earp learned gambling and boxing while working on the rail head in the Wyoming Territory.

20.

Wyatt Earp developed a reputation from officiating boxing matches and refereed a fight between John Shanssey and Prof.

21.

In late 1869 Wyatt Earp courted 20-year-old Urilla Sutherland, daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland who operated the Exchange Hotel in Lamar, Missouri, the Barton County seat.

22.

Wyatt Earp bought a lot on the outskirts of town for $50 where he built a house in August 1870.

23.

Wyatt Earp ran against his elder half-brother Newton for the office of constable and won by 137 votes to Newton's 108, but their father lost the election for Justice of the Peace in a very close four-way race.

24.

Wyatt Earp went through a downward spiral after Urilla's death, and he had a series of legal problems.

25.

Wyatt Earp was in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar, which were designated to fund local schools, but had failed to turn the money over to the county.

26.

The court seized Cromwell's mowing machine and sold it for $38 to make up the difference between what Wyatt Earp turned in and what Cromwell owed.

27.

Cromwell's suit claimed that Wyatt Earp owed him $75, the estimated value of the machine.

28.

Wyatt Earp was summoned to appear at a hearing on the matter.

29.

Wyatt Earp told Lake that he "arrived in Wichita direct from my buffalo hunt in '74", but there's no evidence that he ever hunted buffalo.

30.

Wyatt Earp officially joined the Wichita marshal's office on April 21,1875, after the election of Mike Meagher as city marshal, making $100 per month.

31.

On last Wednesday, policeman Wyatt Earp found a stranger lying near the bridge in a drunken stupor.

32.

Wyatt Earp took him to the 'cooler' and on searching him found in the neighborhood of $500 on his person.

33.

Wyatt Earp was taken next morning, before his honor, the police judge, paid his fine for his fun like a little man and went on his way rejoicing.

34.

Wyatt Earp was appointed assistant marshal in Dodge City under Marshal Lawrence Deger around May 1876.

35.

Wyatt Earp made about $5,000 in profit but was unable to file any mining claims, so he returned to Dodge City in the spring.

36.

On Sunday, January 9,1876, while sitting in the back room of the Custom House saloon, Wyatt Earp's revolver slipped from his holster.

37.

Bell spent the night in jail and was fined twenty dollars, while Wyatt Earp's fine was the legal minimum.

38.

Wyatt Earp was given a temporary commission as deputy US Marshal and left Dodge City, following Rudabaugh over 400 miles through Fort Clark, Texas, where the newspaper reported his presence on January 22,1878, and then on to Fort Griffin, Texas.

39.

Shanssey suggested that Wyatt Earp ask gambler Doc Holliday, who played cards with Rudabaugh.

40.

Wyatt Earp credited Holliday with saving his life that day, and the two became life-long friends.

41.

Wyatt Earp resigned from the Dodge City police force on September 9,1879, and traveled to Las Vegas in New Mexico Territory with his common-law wife Mattie, his brother Jim, and Jim's wife Bessie.

42.

Wyatt Earp's territory included the entire southeast area of the Arizona Territory.

43.

Wyatt Earp brought horses and a buckboard wagon which he planned to convert into a stagecoach, but he found two established stage lines already running.

44.

Wyatt Earp later said that he made most of his money in Tombstone as a professional gambler.

45.

On July 25,1880, Army Captain Joseph H Hurst asked Deputy US Marshal Virgil Earp to assist him in tracking outlaw Cowboys who had stolen six Army mules from Fort Rucker, Arizona.

46.

Wyatt Earp reproduced the handbill in The Tombstone Epitaph on July 30,1880.

47.

Former Democrat state legislator Johnny Behan, a future rival of Wyatt Earp's, arrived in September 1880.

48.

Wyatt Earp, appointed a deputy by his brother, then passed his Wells Fargo job as shotgun messenger to his brother Morgan.

49.

Deputy Sheriff Wyatt Earp was in Owens Saloon a block away, though unarmed.

50.

Wyatt Earp borrowed a pistol from Fred Dodge and went to assist White.

51.

Wyatt Earp buffaloed Brocius, knocking him to the ground, then he grabbed Brocius by the collar and told him to get up.

52.

When Morg and I reached him, Wyatt Earp was squatted on his heels beside Curly Bill and Fred White.

53.

On December 27,1880, Wyatt Earp testified that White's shooting was accidental.

54.

Wyatt Earp served as deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County for only three months.

55.

Wyatt Earp was a Republican and believed that he would continue in the job.

56.

Wyatt Earp resigned from the sheriff's office on November 9,1880, and Shibell immediately appointed Johnny Behan as the new deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County.

57.

Wyatt Earp had been elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature twice, representing Yavapai Country in the 7th Territorial Legislature in 1873 and Mohave County in the 10th in 1879.

58.

Wyatt Earp said that Behan and he agreed that, if Earp withdrew his application, Behan would appoint him as undersheriff.

59.

Wyatt Earp said that he broke his promise to Earp because of an incident which occurred shortly before his appointment when Earp learned that Ike and Billy Clanton had one of his prize horses which had been stolen more than a year before.

60.

Accounts differ as to what happened next, but Wyatt Earp testified that Billy Clanton gave up the horse when Wyatt Earp arrived at the ranch, even before being presented with ownership papers.

61.

The incident embarrassed the Clantons and Behan, and Behan later testified that he did not want to work with Wyatt Earp and chose Woods instead.

62.

Wyatt Earp said that she first visited Tombstone as part of the Pauline Markham Theater Troupe on December 1,1879, for a one-week engagement, but modern researchers have not found any record that she was ever part of the theater company.

63.

Wyatt Earp was in a relationship with Mattie Blaylock, a former prostitute.

64.

Wyatt Earp named a mining claim he filed on February 16,1880 "Mattie Blaylock".

65.

Wyatt Earp invited his friend Bat Masterson to Tombstone to help him run the faro tables in the saloon, and he telegraphed Luke Short in June 1881 to offer him a job as a faro dealer.

66.

When Tyler started a fight after losing a bet, Wyatt Earp threw him out of the saloon.

67.

Corral, Wyatt Earp testified that he offered Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury the $3,600 in Wells Fargo reward money in return for information about the identities of the three robbers.

68.

Wyatt Earp testified that he had other motives for his plan; he hoped that arresting the murderers would boost his chances for election as Cochise County sheriff.

69.

Wyatt Earp told the court that he had taken the extra step of obtaining a second copy of a telegram for Clanton from Wells Fargo, ensuring that the reward applied for capturing the killers dead or alive.

70.

Wyatt Earp told the court that Earp wanted to conceal his family's involvement in the Benson stage robbery and had sworn him to secrecy, and that Morgan Earp had confided in him that he and Wyatt had "piped off $1,400 to Doc Holliday and Bill Leonard", who were supposed to be on the stage the night when Bud Philpot was killed.

71.

Wyatt and Virgil Earp rode with the sheriff's posse to track the stage robbers, and Wyatt discovered an unusual boot heel print in the mud.

72.

Wyatt Earp asked Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday to assist him, as he intended to disarm them.

73.

Wyatt Earp had been deputized by Virgil a few days prior as a temporary assistant marshal and Morgan was a deputy city marshal.

74.

Wyatt Earp said that Tom McLaury threw open his coat to show that he was not armed and that the first two shots were fired by the Earp party.

75.

Since Virgil was confined to bed due to his wounds, Wyatt Earp testified in a written statement that he drew his gun only after Clanton and McLaury went for their pistols.

76.

Wyatt Earp said that the evidence indicated that the Earps and Holliday acted within the law and that Virgil had deputized Holliday and Wyatt.

77.

That same day, Wyatt Earp sent a message to Ike Clanton that he wanted to reconcile their differences, which Clanton refused.

78.

Wyatt Earp felt that he could not rely on civil justice and decided to take matters into his own hands and kill the murderers himself.

79.

The day after Morgan's murder, Deputy US Marshal Wyatt Earp formed a posse made up of his brothers James and Warren, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster, Jack "Turkey Creek" Johnson, Charles "Hairlip Charlie" Smith, Dan Tipton, and Texas Jack Vermillion to protect the family and pursue the suspects, paying them $5 a day.

80.

Wyatt Earp returned Curly Bill's gunfire with his own shotgun, hitting him in the chest from about 50 feet away, causing him to fall into the water's edge of the spring and die.

81.

Wyatt Earp then fired his revolver, mortally wounding Johnny Barnes in the chest and wounding Milt Hicks in the arm.

82.

Wyatt Earp told biographer Stuart Lake that both sides of his long coat were shot through, and another bullet struck his boot heel.

83.

Wyatt Earp relayed Earp's story about how his overcoat was hit on both sides of his body by a charge of buckshot and that his saddle horn was shot off.

84.

Wyatt Earp was finally able to get on his horse and retreat with the rest of the posse.

85.

Wyatt Earp told several versions of the story in which he had trouble remounting his horse because his cartridge belt had slipped down his legs.

86.

Wyatt Earp was never wounded in any of his confrontations, which added to his mystique.

87.

Hooker congratulated Earp on killing Curly Bill, and Wyatt told him that he wanted to buy new mounts.

88.

Wyatt Earp provided Wyatt and his posse with new mounts but refused to take their money.

89.

Behan's posse was then observed in the distance, and Hooker suggested that Wyatt Earp make his stand there, but Wyatt Earp moved into the hills about three miles distant near Reilly Hill.

90.

In 1888 Wyatt Earp gave an interview to California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, during which he claimed to have killed "over a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves" in his time as a lawman.

91.

Wyatt Earp's movements began to receive national press coverage after he killed Frank Stilwell in Tucson, and he left Arizona with his brother Warren, Holliday, McMaster, "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson, and Texas Jack Vermillion.

92.

Wyatt Earp dealt faro at Masterson's saloon for several weeks, then left for Gunnison, Colorado, in May 1882 with McMaster, Vermillion, and Warren Wyatt Earp.

93.

Holliday and Wyatt Earp met again in June 1882 in Gunnison after Wyatt Earp intervened to keep his friend from being arrested on murder charges which they all had pending against them for killing Frank Stillwell in Tucson.

94.

Wyatt Earp saw Holliday for a final time in the late winter of 1886, where they met in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel.

95.

The San Diego Union printed a report from the San Francisco Call on July 9,1882, that Virgil Earp was in San Francisco and that Wyatt was expected to arrive from Colorado that day.

96.

Wyatt Earp took a job managing a horse stable in Santa Rosa.

97.

Wyatt Earp was reputed to own a six-horse stable in San Francisco, although it was learned later that the horses were leased.

98.

Wyatt Earp had met a gambler from Arizona and he had asked her to marry him.

99.

Wyatt Earp did not believe in divorce and therefore refused, but she ran away with the gambler anyway.

100.

Wyatt Earp arrived in Eagle City, Idaho, in 1884 along with Josephine, his brothers Warren and James, and James's wife Bessie.

101.

Wyatt Earp joined the crowd looking for gold in the Murray-Eagle mining district, and they paid $2,250 for a 50 feet diameter white circus in which they opened a dance hall and saloon called The White Elephant.

102.

Wyatt Earp was named deputy sheriff in the area, including newly incorporated Kootenai County, Idaho, which was disputing jurisdiction of Eagle City with Shoshone County.

103.

Around April 1885, Wyatt Earp reportedly used his badge to join a band of claim jumpers in Embry Camp, later renamed Chewelah, Washington.

104.

About 10 years later, a reporter hunted up Buzzard after the Fitzimmons-Sharkey fight and extracted a story from him that accused Wyatt Earp of being the brains behind lot-jumping and real-estate fraud, further tarnishing his reputation.

105.

Wyatt Earp speculated in San Diego's booming real estate market, and he bought four saloons and gambling halls between 1887 and around 1896, all in the "respectable" part of town.

106.

Wyatt Earp owned the Oyster Bar located in the first granite-faced building in San Diego, the four-story Louis Bank Building at 837 5th Avenue, one of the more popular saloons in the Stingaree district.

107.

Wyatt Earp had a long-standing interest in boxing and horse racing, and he refereed boxing matches in San Diego, Tijuana, and San Bernardino.

108.

Wyatt Earp won a race horse named Otto Rex in a card game and began investing in race horses, and he judged prize fights on both sides of the border; he was one of the judges at the county fair horse races held in Escondido, California, in 1889.

109.

The boom came to an end as rapidly as it had started, and the population of San Diego fell from a high of 40,000 in 1885 when Wyatt Earp arrived to only 16,000 in 1890.

110.

Wyatt Earp held on to his San Diego properties, but when their value fell, he could not pay the taxes and was forced to sell the lots.

111.

Wyatt Earp continued to race horses, but he could no longer afford to own them by 1896, so he raced them on behalf of the owner of a horse stable in Santa Rosa which he managed.

112.

In Santa Rosa, Wyatt Earp personally competed in and won a harness race.

113.

Josephine wrote in her memoir that she and Wyatt Earp were married in 1892 by the captain of multimillionaire Lucky Baldwin's yacht off the California coast.

114.

Wyatt Earp gambled to excess and he had adulterous affairs.

115.

Wyatt Earp knew that she preferred being called "Josephine" and detested "Sadie", but he had a mischievous sense of humor and began calling her Sadie early in their relationship.

116.

Wyatt Earp gambled away the filing fees and lied to him about what happened to the lease, which later turned out to be valuable.

117.

Wyatt Earp distrusted her ability to manage her finances and made an arrangement with her sister Henrietta Lenhardt.

118.

Wyatt Earp put oil leases in Henrietta's name with the agreement that the proceeds would benefit Josephine after his death.

119.

Wyatt Earp frequently griped about his lack of work and financial success and even his character and personality, and he often went on long walks to get away from her.

120.

Josephine could be controlling, and a relative of Wyatt Earp joked that nobody could convict him of cold-blooded murder because he had lived with her for almost 50 years.

121.

Wyatt Earp was a last-minute choice as referee for a boxing match on December 2,1896, which the promoters billed as the heavyweight championship of the world, when Bob Fitzsimmons was set to fight Tom Sharkey at the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco.

122.

Wyatt Earp had refereed 30 or so matches in earlier days, though not under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules but under the older and more liberal London Prize Ring Rules.

123.

Wyatt Earp stopped the bout, ruling that Fitzsimmons had hit Sharkey below the belt, but no one seemed to have witnessed the punch.

124.

Wyatt Earp awarded the fight to Sharkey, whom attendants carried out "limp as a rag".

125.

Until the fight, Wyatt Earp had been a minor figure known regionally in California and Arizona; afterward, his name was known from coast to coast.

126.

Wyatt Earp was reported to have secured the backing of a syndicate of sporting men to open a gambling house there.

127.

Sadie got pregnant too, and she thought she could persuade Wyatt Earp from heading to Alaska.

128.

Wyatt Earp was in agreement, but Sadie, who was 37, miscarried soon after.

129.

Wyatt Earp managed a small store during the spring of 1899, selling beer and cigars for the Alaska Commercial Company.

130.

The best accommodation Wyatt Earp and Sadie could find was a wooden shack a few minutes from the main street, only slightly better than a tent.

131.

Wyatt Earp used the club rooms upstairs as a brothel, another fact that Sadie worked hard to see omitted from stories about him.

132.

Wyatt rubbed elbows with future novelist Rex Beach, writer Jack London, playwright Wilson Mizner, and boxing promoter Tex Rickard, with whom Earp developed a long-lasting relationship.

133.

Wyatt Earp told others he made his money by "mining the miners".

134.

Wyatt Earp was arrested twice in Nome for minor offenses, including being drunk and disorderly, although he was not tried.

135.

In November 1899 Wyatt Earp left Alaska on the 258 feet iron steamer Cleveland.

136.

Wyatt Earp learned about his death soon after, and although some modern researchers believe he went to Arizona to avenge his brother's death, the distance and time required to make the trip made it unlikely, and no contemporary evidence has been found to support that theory.

137.

Wyatt Earp arrived in Seattle with a plan to open a saloon and gambling room.

138.

Wyatt Earp faced considerable opposition to his plan from John Considine, who controlled all three gaming operations in town.

139.

Wyatt Earp partnered with an established local gambler named Thomas Urguhart, and they opened the Union Club saloon and gambling operation in Seattle's Pioneer Square.

140.

The Seattle Star noted two weeks later that Wyatt Earp's saloon was developing a large following.

141.

Prize fighting became the sport of choice and Wyatt Earp's income soared with side bets.

142.

In November 1901, at age 40, Sadie got pregnant again, and she and Wyatt Earp decided to leave Alaska.

143.

Wyatt Earp hauled ore and supplies for the Tonopah Mining Company to the Carson and Colorado Railroad depots at Sodaville and Candelaria.

144.

Wyatt Earp staked mining claims just outside Death Valley and elsewhere in the Mojave Desert.

145.

Wyatt Earp's actions did not resolve the dispute, which eventually escalated into the "Potash Wars" of the Mojave Desert.

146.

Since money had not changed hands, the charge against Wyatt Earp was reduced to vagrancy and he was released on $500 bail.

147.

Wyatt Earp had some modest success with the Happy Days gold mine, and they lived on the slim proceeds of income from that and oil wells in Oakland and Kern County.

148.

In 1915, Wyatt Earp visited the set of director Allan Dwan's movie, The Half-Breed, starring Douglas Fairbanks.

149.

In 1916 Wyatt Earp went with his friend Jack London, whom he knew from Nome, to visit the set of former cowboy, sailor, and movie actor-turned-film director Raoul Walsh, who was shooting at the studio of Mutual Film conglomerate in Edendale, California.

150.

In 1925 Wyatt Earp began to collaborate on a biography with his friend and former mining engineer John Flood to get his story told in a way that he approved.

151.

Flood volunteered his time and attempted to write an authorized biography of Wyatt Earp's life, based on Wyatt Earp's recollections.

152.

Wyatt Earp thought Earp needed to be shown as a hero, and the manuscript includes a chapter titled "Conflagration" in which Earp saves two women, one a cripple, from a Tombstone fire.

153.

Several copies were made and sold in 1981, and the original carbon copy of the typed manuscript, found among Josephine Wyatt Earp's papers, was given by Glenn Boyer to the Ford County Historical Society.

154.

Wyatt Earp was the last surviving Earp brother and the last surviving participant of the gunfight at the OK.

155.

Josephine, who was Jewish, had Wyatt Earp's body cremated and secretly buried his remains in the Marcus family plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California.

156.

Wyatt Earp had purchased a small white marble headstone which was stolen shortly after her death in 1944.

157.

Actor Kevin Costner, who played Earp in the 1994 movie Wyatt Earp offered to buy a new, larger stone, but the Marcus family thought his offer was self-serving and declined.

158.

Two years before his death, Wyatt Earp defended his decisions before the gunfight at the OK.

159.

Wyatt Earp is dignified, self-contained, game and fearless, and no man commands greater respect.

160.

Wyatt Earp's eyes are blue and fringed with light lashes and set beneath blonde eyebrows.

161.

Wyatt Earp was straight as a pine tree, tall and magnificently built.

162.

Wyatt Earp was often the target of negative newspaper stories that disparaged his and his brothers' reputations.