It's one of the most iconic moments in Wild West history, and it's been romanticized in film, TV, books, and song, but how much do you really know about the historical gunfight at the O.K. Corral? You probably know the names of the heroes, or at least Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and while they were there, it's hard to really qualify them as heroes.
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00:00The gunfight at the O.K. Corral is a shootout that has come to represent the glamour and
00:05gore that define the Wild West, hitting the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday against the
00:10so-called Cochise County Cowboys in Tombstone, Arizona.
00:14Here's the messed-up truth of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
00:18The O.K., or Old Kindersley Corral, was a livery business that operated on Tombstone's
00:24Fremont Street from 1879 to 1888.
00:27Weirdly, the fight itself didn't take place in or next to the Corral as its name would
00:32suggest.
00:33Instead, it happened in a vacant lot next to C.S.
00:36Fly's Photographic Studio and Boarding House, six doors down from the Corral.
00:41Doc Holliday, the iconic dentist-turned-tubercular gunman, was a resident of the boarding house.
00:47One of the fight's main instigators, Ike Clanton, took cover in the studio while shots
01:01were being fired.
01:02So did the one man who might have stopped the carnage, a sheriff of Cochise County,
01:07John Behan.
01:08Incidentally, C.S.
01:09Fly's photographs of late-19th-century Tombstone have become indispensable to our understanding
01:14of life in the Wild West.
01:16Fly did not, however, take any pictures of the battle or its aftermath, but he did participate
01:21in one way.
01:22He disarmed the dying Billy Clanton.
01:24Why the shootout became associated with the O.K.
01:27Corral is still a bit of a mystery, but maybe it's because the gunfight in the vacant lot
01:31next to C.S.
01:32Fly's Photography Studio and Boarding House doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
01:37At the time of the fight, Tombstone, Arizona was a powder keg of warring factions and tensions
01:42about to explode.
01:43It was also a den of iniquity.
01:46In the late 1870s and early 1880s, it had two dance halls, a dozen gambling parlors,
01:5220 saloons, and, in the words of one resident, quote, "...two Bibles."
01:57Tombstone began as a single silver mine.
01:59Prospector Ed Schifflin left an Arizona army post in 1877, hoping to strike it rich in
02:05the Dragoon Mountains.
02:07His friends warned him that, thanks to the large Apache presence in the area, he was,
02:12in effect, digging his own grave.
02:14He proved them wrong, though, and discovered a rich silver vein he named Tombstone.
02:19A town sprung up around his good fortune, and by 1880, the place was teeming with horses
02:23and stagecoaches, with countless other prospectors, sex workers, and aspiring politicians.
02:29Saloons and brothels did very good business.
02:31So did miners.
02:32People continued to pull riches from the ground for seven straight years until a rising water
02:37table put an end to operations.
02:39Tombstone survived plenty of booms and busts, and it eventually earned the name The Town
02:43Too Tough to Die because it rode out the Great Depression in typical stiff-upper-lip style.
02:49The Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan, and John Henry Doc Holliday, have long been
02:55cast as the good guys in the shootout, whereas their opponents, the Cochise County Cowboys,
03:00have been written off as riffraff.
03:02The truth is a lot more complex than that.
03:04In fact, the most revered player of all, Wyatt Earp, was a fugitive from the law when he
03:09moved to Tombstone hoping to make his fortune in silver.
03:12As a young man, he stole a horse in Indian territory, then he escaped jail and went on
03:17the run, moving from town to town and brothel to brothel.
03:20The two most powerful cowboys, Tom and Frank McGlory, came from Iowa in search of cheap
03:25land for their cattle.
03:27And they weren't any better or worse than the thousands of other cattle rustlers who
03:30moved west in the 1870s and 80s with their eye on manifest destiny.
03:34One of the main conflicts between the Earps and the Cowboys was actually pretty mundane.
03:39The Cowboys were aligned with Sheriff Behan.
03:41Wyatt wanted Behan's job.
03:43Meanwhile, Wyatt's brother Virgil, the acting police chief, had spearheaded a campaign to
03:48enforce restrictions on firearms.
03:50Cowboys like their guns.
03:52Tensions arose as they are wont to do, but there are no villains in this tale, and no
03:56heroes either, just self-interested men bent on amassing power and wealth on the frontier.
04:01You know, Wyatt, you and I are pretty much alike, actually.
04:05Both of us live with a gun.
04:06The only difference is that badge.
04:09In March 1881, just seven months before the shootout, Sandy Bob Stagecoach was robbed
04:14by a group of masked men.
04:16The Earps suspected the McGlory brothers were behind the robbery.
04:20The McGlorys were just as convinced it was the Earps, aided and abetted by Doc Holliday.
04:24In the meantime, Virgil Earp was busy cutting a deal with Ike Clanton, one of the Cowboys.
04:29Virgil, eager to look like a tough lawman in advance of the local elections, agreed
04:33to give Ike all the reward money, no questions asked, if Clanton turned in outlaws and suspects.
04:40Clanton took the deal, but it was moot.
04:41King, Leonard, and Crane all ended up dead before Virgil could capture them.
04:45Later, Wyatt Earp, also running for office and knowing Ike Clanton to be of a persuadable
04:50nature, approached the Cowboy, suggesting they fake a Stagecoach robbery.
04:54He and Doc Holliday would scare away the so-called robbers, and no one would get hurt.
04:59Clanton refused to take part, and bad blood continued to accumulate between the two factions,
05:04when in early October, the Earps arrested Cowboys Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence for
05:09robbing a Stagecoach out of Bisbee.
05:11The Cowboys vowed revenge.
05:13They didn't have to wait long.
05:16In films and other retellings of the shootout, it's Wyatt Earp who usually gets all the glory.
05:20But according to most scholars, the real stand-up guy in this Wild West drama was Virgil Earp.
05:26Virgil served as an infantryman in the Union Army in the Civil War before heading west
05:30to join his younger brothers, Wyatt and Morgan.
05:32He quickly made a reputation for himself as an effective, no-nonsense lawman, earning
05:37badges in both Prescott, Arizona, and Tombstone.
05:41Virgil's goal in Tombstone was to put a halt to the rash of Stagecoach robberies that were
05:45terrorizing the populace, and his skills as a sharpshooter went a long way toward helping
05:49him accomplish his goal.
05:51On that fateful day in October 1881, when a bloodbath seemed inevitable, Virgil attempted
05:56to get the Cowboys to drop their weapons.
05:58"...Throw up your hands.
06:00I want your guns."
06:02They didn't, of course, and a firefight ensued, with Virgil continuing to unload his gun even
06:07as he took a bullet to the leg.
06:09No one knows for sure what guns were actually used in the gunfight at the OK Corral, although
06:14it's almost certain they were all black powder weapons, the smoke of which would have added
06:19to the confusion of an already chaotic scene.
06:22Over the years, a number of antique gun dealers have profited handsomely from the sale of
06:26guns supposedly deployed at the scene.
06:28One Colt .45 single-action revolver, rumored to have belonged to Wyatt Earp, sold at auction
06:33for $225,000, and a shotgun reportedly used by Holliday went for $150,000, but the authenticity
06:41of those weapons is still up for debate.
06:43Lawmen at the time often carried single-action revolvers.
06:46Holliday supposedly used a 10-gauge, double-barreled shotgun given to him by Virgil.
06:51The Cowboys all claimed to have been unarmed at the time of the shootout, but with the
06:55exceptions of Ike Clanton and Billy Clybourne, who fled the scene, that obviously turned
06:59out to be untrue.
07:00Frank McClary and Billy Clanton were found dead at the scene with Colt Frontier revolvers
07:05in their hands.
07:06Tom McClary was almost certainly a victim of Holliday's gun.
07:10His body was riddled with at least 12 buckshot wounds.
07:13So much for Virgil's gun control crusade.
07:16As enemies of the Earps, the Cochise County Cowboys have sometimes been portrayed as evil
07:21men bent on killing, but for the most part, they were considered by the locals to be
07:25more of a nuisance than a group of real villains.
07:28The Posse, which boasted up to 300 members in its heyday, specialized in cattle rustling
07:33and small-time heists.
07:34They rode through towns in the Arizona Territory, brandishing their pistols and putting the
07:39fear of God into women, children, and preachers.
07:42And they became sworn enemies of the Earps, who wanted to bring the so-called Cowboys
07:46to heel.
07:47A number of petty incidents of horse theft and retribution between the Earps and the
07:56Cowboys took place between 1879 and the shootout in 1881, the bulk of which put the McClarys
08:01and Clantons and other Cowboys in a bad light.
08:04But Hollywood and historians may have actually gotten it wrong.
08:07Ike Clanton, the most demonized figure in the story, ran a lunch counter, and Tom McClary
08:13was unarmed at the time of the shootout.
08:15Maybe the Cowboys weren't so dastardly after all.
08:18Most versions of the OK Corral story put the blame for the gunfight squarely on the shoulders
08:23of Cowboy Ike Clanton, who, Wild West lore suggests, repeatedly threatened to kill the
08:28Earps for getting in his cattle rustling way.
08:31In the days leading up to the shootout, the Cowboys, the Earps, and Doc Holliday were
08:35all quite busy drinking and trading barbs and threats, and Clanton was overheard in
08:40more than one Tombstone saloon telling patriots that he planned to shoot the Earps as soon
08:44as he could get his hands on a weapon.
08:46But Clanton was known for talking a big game, and according to his surviving relatives,
08:50the Earps and Doc Holliday were the real instigators, robbing stagecoaches and getting away with
08:55it and harassing the Clantons and McClurys whenever they got a chance.
08:59The truth most likely lies somewhere in between.
09:01What we know is that, after an evening of drinking and bragging, the Earps and Holliday
09:05faced off against Clanton and his Cowboys in a historic firefight that killed Ike's
09:10brother Billy and stained Ike's reputation forever.
09:13He is now often described as a coward and a blowhard because, having boasted about his
09:18gun-slinging prowess, he fled the scene of battle, later bringing charges against the
09:22Earps and Doc Holliday.
09:24All four men, incidentally, were acquitted, and Ike Clanton was killed by police in 1887.
09:29Wyatt Earp described the Cochise County Cowboys as, quote,
09:32"...low lives and cow thieves."
09:34Regardless, the town mourned Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McClury in spectacular style,
09:40with 2,300 people paying their respects over the course of the day-long memorial.
09:44The funeral procession wound for two blocks and was comprised of 300 people on foot, 22
09:50carriages, and several men on horseback.
09:52A brass band led the way to the cemetery.
09:56And the cemetery where the men were buried, Boot Hill, is so-called because the people
10:00interned there often died with their boots still on.
10:03"...Well, if you happen to see this, uh, gentleman, tell him I'll be waiting for him at Boot Hill.
10:08He'll have only one direction to travel from there."
10:13Some tales of the Wild West are greatly exaggerated in their wildness, but in the months leading
10:18up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as well as in the months following, no one — no
10:23one — was charged with a crime, masked men, robbed stagecoaches, and got away with it.
10:29Or, in the case of the outlaws suspected of the Sandy Bob stagecoach robbery, they
10:33were killed before they could stand trial.
10:35Men simply took justice into their own hands, meaning that, after the Earps and Doc Holliday
10:40were exonerated for the killings of Billy Clanton and the McClury brothers, Morgan Earp
10:44was shot dead in a saloon.
10:46Wyatt, vowing vengeance for his brother, assembled a posse and unleashed a vendetta, gunning
10:51down Frank Stilwell and his accomplices in cold blood.
10:56Newspaper accounts of the gun battle varied greatly, depending on the individual publication's
11:00alliances with the fighters.
11:02The Tombstone Epitaph sided with the Earps, and the Nugget was with the Cowboys.
11:07The Epitaph's name had many joking that it would be dead within a year, but the newspaper
11:11proved to be resilient and relevant, partially because of founder John P. Klum's mission
11:16to use its pages to rid Tombstone of corruption, as well as those pesky Cochise Cowboys.
11:23Klum wasn't entirely pure in his motives.
11:25The Epitaph, in addition to aligning itself with the Earps, was also in the pocket of
11:30mining interests in the town.
11:32The Nugget, in contrast, championed the Cowboys and was, in its coverage of the gunfight,
11:37unabashedly biased against Holliday and the Earps.
11:40I guess if you're a sheriff cutting deals with local cattle thieves, it's as well to
11:44keep their favorite paper sweet.
11:46In one article about the battle's aftermath, the writer strains credulity with regard to
11:52Clanton Boys, stating,
11:53"[They did not bear the reputation of being of a quarrelsome disposition, but were known
11:57as fighting men, and have generally conducted themselves in a quiet and orderly manner when
12:02in Tombstone."