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N0KFQ > TODAY 13.01.17 16:03l 71 Lines 3489 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 19039_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jan 13
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<GB7CIP<N0KFQ
Sent: 170113/1358Z 19039@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1929
Wyatt Earp dies in Los Angeles
Nearly 50 years after the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral,
Wyatt Earp dies quietly in Los Angeles at the age of 80.
The Earp brothers had long been competing with the
Clanton-McClaury ranching families for political and economic
control of Tombstone, Arizona, and the surrounding region. On
October 26, 1881, the simmering tensions finally boiled over into
violence, and Wyatt, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and his
close friend, Doc Holliday, killed three men from the Clanton and
McLaury clans in a 30-second shoot-out on a Tombstone street near
the O.K. Corral. A subsequent hearing found that the Earps and
Holliday had been acting in their capacity as law officers and
deputies, and they were acquitted of any wrongdoing. However, not
everyone was satisfied with the verdict, and the Earps found
their popularity among the townspeople was on the wane. Worse,
far from bringing an end the long-standing feud between the Earps
and Clanton-McLaurys, the shoot-out sparked a series of vengeful
attacks and counterattacks.
In late December 1881, the Clantons and McLaurys launched their
vendetta with a shotgun ambush of Virgil Earp; he survived, but
lost the use of his left arm. Three months later, Wyatt and
Morgan were playing billiards when two shots were fired from an
unknown source. Morgan was fatally wounded.
As a U.S. deputy marshal, Wyatt had a legal right and obligation
to bring Morgan's killers to justice, but he quickly proved to be
more interested in avenging his brother's death than in enforcing
the law. Three days after Morgan's murder, Frank Stillwell, one
of the suspects in the murder, was found dead in a Tucson,
Arizona, rail yard. Wyatt and his close friend Doc Holliday were
accused_accurately, as later accounts revealed_of murdering
Stillwell. Wyatt refused to submit to arrest, and instead fled
Arizona with Holliday and several other allies, pausing long
enough to stop and kill a Mexican named Florentino Cruz, who he
believed also had been involved in Morgan's death.
In the years to come, Wyatt wandered throughout the West,
speculating in gold mines in Idaho, running a saloon in San
Francisco, and raising thoroughbred horses in San Diego. At the
turn of the century, the footloose gunslinger joined the Alaskan
gold rush, and he ran a saloon in Nome until 1901. After
participating in the last of the great gold rushes in Nevada,
Wyatt finally settled in Los Angeles, where he tried
unsuccessfully to find someone to publicize his many western
adventures. Wyatt's famous role in the shootout at the O.K.
Corral did attract the admiring attention of the city's thriving
new film industry. For several years, Wyatt became an unpaid
technical consultant on Hollywood Westerns, drawing on his
colorful past to tell flamboyant matinee idols like William Hart
and Tom Mix how it had really been. When Wyatt died in 1929, Mix
reportedly wept openly at his funeral.
Ironically, the wider fame that eluded Wyatt in life came soon
after he died. A young journalist named Stuart Lake published
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall, a wildly fanciful biography that
portrayed the gunman as a brave and virtuous instrument of
frontier justice. Dozens of similarly laudatory books and movies
followed, ensuring Wyatt Earp an enduring place in the popular
American mythology of the Wild West.
73 - K.O., n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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