Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a gunfight that occurred at about 3 P.M. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, United States. The famous gunfight did not actually occur at the O.K. Corral. It occurred in a fifteen- to twenty-foot space between Fly's Lodging House and photographic studio, and the MacDonald assay house west of it. The end of the gunfight took place in Fremont Street. Some of the fighting was in Fremont Street in front of the vacant lot. About thirty shots were fired in thirty seconds. Although only three men were killed during the gunfight, it is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West, even though many other gunfights of the period resulted in more people killed (e.g., the Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight, the Going Snake Massacre, the Hot Springs Gunfight, and the Gunfight at Hide Park).

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral has been portrayed in numerous Western films. It has come to symbolize the struggle between law-and-order and open-banditry and rustling in frontier towns of the Old West, where law enforcement was often weak or simply nonexistent. In other views, the fight was a more complex embodiment of some of the tensions of the American Civil War of a generation before. One group of fighters represented rural Democrats from Texas who were involved in the cattle-trade in a remote area of Arizona territory which had been desert just a few years before. The other faction (the Earps) had come from the East with the frontier, and represented the very different city interests of Yankee Republican capitalists and businessmen who were attempting to manage a silver-mining boom-town with Eastern expectations of behavior. The gunfight occurred on the physical border of these two cultures.

The proximate cause of the conflict that led up to the fight was the arrest by Virgil Earp, acting in his capacity as deputy federal marshal, of two rural “cowboys” for a stagecoach robbery. D...

WARFARE OF THE EARPS AND CLANTONS

Undoubtedly the most notorious episode of Tombstone's early history occurred October 26, 1881. The Clanton gang of cowboys had refused to recognize the local supremacy of the Earps, and there was bad blood between the factions.

On the night of October 25, Ike Clanton, a prominent, though decidedly not plucky, member of the cowboy faction, had been arrested by City Marshal Virgil Earp and had been fined $50 for disorderly conduct, which appears to have been merely in objecting to the marshal's abuse. On the morning of the 26th of the Clanton gang in Tombstone were Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, Billy Clanton and Ike Clanton. They had appreciated the intimation that Tombstone was unhealthy for them and had saddled their horses to leave for their home ranch in the Babocomari Mountains. The horses were in the O. K. Corral, which fronted on two streets. Fearing trouble, they planned to leave by the rear gate, on Fremont Street. Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were not armed, for both the evening before had had their pistols taken from them by the city authorities. The other two had revolvers.

The men were leading their horses out of the gate when they were confronted, almost from ambush, by four of the Earps, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Jim, and by Doc Holliday. Virgil Earp, armed with a sawed-off express shotgun, and accompanying his demand with profanity, yelled, "Throw up your hands." But he didn't wait for the action demanded and shot almost as soon as he spoke. Tom McLaury showed his empty hands and cried, "Gentlemen, I am unarmed." Holliday answered with the discharge of his shotgun. Billy Clanton fell at the first fire, mortally wounded, but rolled over and fired two shots from his pistol between his bent knees. One shot "creased" Morgan Earp across the shoulder and he fell to the ground. Ike Clanton ran into a vacant lot and escaped. Frank McLaury remained, fighting bravely, and, holding his horse by the bridle, fired four sho...