The O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ

Our time in Tombstone was not long, but it


was long enough to fit in a ginormous ice cream cone.  That plus an old-fashioned western town, tickets to the re-enacted shootout, and a look-see at the museum made for a fun and worthwhile stop in this famous town.

Working on the road sometimes means, literally, working on the road.  This time, while the boys and Manuel were watching the shootout re-enactment, I was on a phone meeting in the car.  It is a different view, consulting while looking out the windshield in Tombstone.  This time was more notable than most as a cowboy with a braid down his back, packing heat on his, brought his Chihuahua for a potty stop in front of the car.

The boys were fascinated with the story of the O.K. Corral.  Who isn't?  This is the most famous gunfight in western history.  It is the one that symbolizes the lawlessness of the wild west.  They came running back to the car with details of the shootout, the people, the story.

"And Billy the Kid was there!" they told me excitedly.  "Billy the Kid?  Surely not," I thought.  We'd just come through the Lincoln County, learned about the Kid, and there was no mention of the O.K. Corral.

Well, honestly, I can't hear about the Earps and the shootout without wanting to, once more, read about all the details.  It is what I do.  We go places, we learn about it together, I learn about it more deeply, and we talk about it some more.  The boys write about it in their journal, and I write about it in the blog.  We refer back to our adventures often.  I admit, I am a bit greedy about all this learning stuff.  I feel like I have a chance to learn a bunch of stuff I missed the first time around.

I found out real story of this Billy the Kid.  I got a couple of quotes from the Earps that made them more real.  I even found Virgil Earp's original testimony on-line as well as the law that he and his brothers were trying to enforce.

We got a taste of the wild west in this roadschool adventure.  This is the bare-bones story we refer use to help us keep it all straight.

Shootout at the OK Corral

In November 1881, an Ordinance was passed declaring it 'unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, concealed or otherwise within the limits of the City of Tombstone.' (Click here to see a copy of the law.)

Cowboys had to drop their weapons off at the Grand Hotel or the Sheriff's office on the way into town and could pick them up again on the way out of town.

There was history between the Earps and Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton.  Ike was in town.  Whiskey was flowing, threats were made, and there were fights before the fight.  The course of action, according to Virgil, who was the City and US Marshall, was to disarm the men in order to keep the peace.

None of the men had been involved in a shoot-out before.

On the side of the law were the three Earp brothers:  Virgil who actually more central to the story and was the City Marshall and US Marshall; Morgan, his deputy; and Wyatt, his temporary deputy -- as well as Doc Holliday who had been deputized to help disarm the men.

On the side of the rustlers, Ike Clanton had five.  Himself, his brother, the McLaury brothers, and Billy the Kid Claiborne.  Two were unarmed at the time of the fight and ran.  At the end of the fight, the remaining three -- none of whom had any previous clashes with the Earps -- lay dead.

Within 6 years, all but two but would be dead as well.

• It turns out this Billy the Kid is not the Billy the Kid.  This 'Billy the Kid' Claiborne insisted people call him Billy the Kid when William 'Billy the Kid' Bonney was killed earlier that year.  Not surprisingly, this Billy's reputation took a nose dive after his failure to fire in the most famous gunfight in history.  He was killed a little more than a year later when he insisted someone call him the Kid or die.  The story is he was shot and when the gun was raised to shoot again, he said, "Don't shoot again.  I'm killed."
• Ike Clanton, a principal in the fight, was unarmed at the critical point and ran from the scene, too.  He  later filed murder charges against Virgil Earp for the murder of his brother during the fight, but there was not enough evidence to indict.  Taking the law into his own hands, he  attempted to murder Virgil a couple of times, was involved in Morgan's murder, and attempted murder on Wyatt.  He died six years later fleeing from lawmen.
• Virgil Earp suffered an assassination attempt two months after the gunfight. The Earps had received repeated death threats after the gunfight.  Virgil was blasted with three loads from double-barreled shotgun in the back and left arm.  Against the odds, he survived the attack.  He had six inches of bone removed from his left arm and was maimed for life.  Virgil told his wife, "Never mind, I still have one arm left to hug you."  Virgil lived another 24 years.  Though it was believed Ike Clanton was responsible for the attack, the defense brought in seven witnesses that put in him North Carolina at the time, and he was found not guilty.  
• Morgan was assassinated three months after Virgil's near assassination, shot through the side while playing pool.  Wyatt said that he and Morgan had an agreement to tell the other what they saw as they passed in the world after death.  The last words Morgan whispered to Wyatt were "I can't see a damned thing."
• Wyatt Earp now felt that he could not trust the law to do its job.  The second attack on Virgil came when he was being relocated to California fir safety and recuperation., Wyatt Earp killed the would-be assassin, Frank Stillwell, who was also responsible for killing Morgan.  Ike Clanton got away.  As a deputy US Marshall, he formed a posse and went on a Vendetta Ride.  When the Earps finally rode away from Arizona territory and into New Mexico, they had killed four men and the vendetta was over.  Much to his frustration, though, he found the gunfight would never go away.  Featured in a book, Wyatt Earp would become synonymous with the gunfight at the OK Corral.  Wyatt lived until 1929.
• John Henry 'Doc' Holliday died six years after the gunfight, finally succumbing to tuberculosis in a hotel/sanatorium  in Colorado.  Wyatt Earp, who credited Doc with saving his life, described him this way in an 1896 interview. "Doc was a dentist, not a lawman or an assassin, whom necessity had made a gambler, a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond, a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit, a long lean as-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun that I ever knew."