It's easy for us to compartmentalize American history and think of the Wild West as having no connection to anything else at the time. Sure, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened at the same time that many industrial changes were happening on the east coast, but they happened in entirely different worlds. However, it may surprise you to learn that Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp actually had a friendship with author Jack London, and in their later years, the pair even met silent film actor Charlie Chaplin. Let's take a look at the truth about Wyatt Earp's friendship with Jack London.
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00:00When you think of Wyatt Earp, chances are you probably think of either Dodge City,
00:05Kansas or Tombstone, Arizona. But Nome, Alaska? That sounds weird, right?
00:10Well, it is a little weird. But the truth is that Wyatt Earp
00:14actually spent some time in Alaska during the gold rushes of the 1890s.
00:19And while he was there, he became friends with Jack London,
00:21who would go on to become one of America's most famous authors.
00:25So, how did this happen? Well, in the late 1890s, there was money to be made from the
00:30gold rushes in the Yukon and Alaska, and Wyatt, like many people in the Old West,
00:36was willing to chase it. Though he's most famous as a lawman,
00:39the truth is that he spent most of his life as a bartender and gambler.
00:42So when the Nome gold rush began in 1899, Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine Sadie Marcus,
00:50made the trip north from California to Alaska. But while thousands of other hopefuls were
00:55rushing to Alaska to try and get rich quick off of gold mining, Earp and Marcus were a lot
01:00wilier, because they knew a much easier way to get that gold rush money.
01:05They took it from the miners after all the hard work was already done. Those miners,
01:09after all, needed food, shelter, and companionship. And the lucky ones who
01:13did strike it rich were looking for places to spend their sudden windfall.
01:18Instead of prospecting for gold then, Earp and Marcus opened the Dexter Saloon in Nome.
01:23According to a Wyatt Earp anthology, the Dexter Saloon quickly became the centerpiece of Nome
01:29nightlife, where miners would go to gamble away their fortunes. It was there that Earp met a
01:34young prospector by the name of Jack London. According to Smithsonian, London was 21 when
01:40he set out from San Francisco for the northern goldfields. The work itself was certainly brutal,
01:45but getting there was no picnic either. It's estimated that 100,000 men set out for the
01:51Klondike, but less than a third of them were able to power through alive.
01:55Canadian authorities required each man to bring a year's worth of food with him,
01:59about 1,000 pounds, in addition to mining equipment, which doubled the weight.
02:04London didn't get rich in Alaska, but he eventually got rich
02:08writing about Alaska, as his experiences during the gold rush inspired him to write
02:12seminal works such as the short story To Build a Fire and his classic novel Call of the Wild,
02:19which drew on his experiences in the frozen north.
02:22That's good, Buck, but more like this, huh?"
02:30Eventually, of course, Earp and London both left Alaska and returned to the continental U.S.,
02:36Earp considerably more wealthy than London. But it wasn't the last time they would get together.
02:41Earp ended up settling in the Los Angeles area and soon became friendly with a number of people
02:46in the burgeoning film industry. In 1916, London, who was by then considered one of
02:52America's greatest living authors, visited Earp in L.A., and the two decided to track
02:56down film director Raoul Walsh so they could hear firsthand about his experiences on the
03:01border with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution a couple of years earlier.
03:05What resulted is one of the strangest Hollywood legends of all.
03:09According to True West magazine, after a long talk, London, Earp, and Walsh ended up going out
03:15to dinner, where they ran into the highest-paid entertainer in the world, silent film genius
03:21Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was reportedly awestruck by meeting Earp in London. He said that he was
03:27nearly inspired to head to Alaska to search for gold after reading London's works. And he also
03:32recognized Earp, saying,
03:34You're the bloke from Arizona, aren't you? Tame the baddies, huh?
03:37The meeting, which possibly inspired Chaplin to make his classic 1925 film The Gold Rush,
03:43has to be one of the weirdest stories ever told. Sadly, London never really had a chance to tell
03:49it, as he died later that year at just 40 years old. But in life, he gave the world some of its
03:55greatest stories, including his unlikely friendship with Old West legend Wyatt Earp.