Why wyatt earp is famous

Wyatt gets involved in horse racing, gambling, and refereeing boxing matches. Fall Wyatt and Josie join others in a gold rush to Nome, Alaska. They run a saloon and various gambling ventures during their time there.

Wyatt stakes claims in gold and copper mines near the Whipple Mountains. Over the next few years he supports himself by mining, police work, gambling, and real estate deals. Wyatt spends several summers in Los Angeles, where he meets Hollywood actors and becomes an adviser on the set of silent Western films.

Wyatt supposedly meets John Wayne when he is working as an extra and prop man — Wayne later says he based his depictions of Western lawmen on Wyatt Earp. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.

Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. In December , Earp joined his brothers Virgil and Morgan in Tombstone, Arizona, a booming frontier town that had only recently been erected when a speculator discovered the land there contained vast amounts of silver.

His good friend Doc Holliday , whom he'd met in Kansas, joined him. But the silver riches the Earp brothers hoped to find never came, forcing Earp begrudgingly to return to law work. In a town and a region desperate to tame the lawlessness of the cowboy culture that pervaded the frontier, Earp was a welcome sight. In March , Earp set out to find a posse of cowboys that had robbed a Tombstone stagecoach and its driver.

In an effort to close in on the outlaws, he struck a deal with a rancher named Ike Clanton, who regularly dealt with the cowboys working around Tombstone. But the partnership quickly dissolved. Clanton, paranoid that Earp would leak the details of their bargain, turned against him.

By October, Clanton was out of his mind, drunk and parading around Tombstone's saloons, bragging that he was going to kill one of the Earp men. Everything came to a head on October 26, , when the Earps, along with Holliday, met Clanton, his brother Billy, and two others, Frank McLaury and his brother, Tom, on a small lot on the edge of town near an enclosure called the O. There, the greatest gunfight in the West's history took place. Over the course of just 30 seconds, a barrage of shots was fired, ultimately killing Billy and both of the McLaury brothers.

Virgil and Morgan, as well as Holliday, all were injured. The only one unscathed was Wyatt. The battle ratcheted up tensions between the cowboy community and those who were looking for a more settled West to emerge. Whatever his correct name, he was guilty as far as the Earp posse was concerned.

After the killing, the posse rode out of the area, and on March 23, Smith and Tipton separated from the others to obtain information in Tombstone. The two men immediately ran into trouble. Wyatt and his men were to meet Smith later in the Whetstone Mountains, at a watering hole known as Iron Springs.

Sheriff Behan then organized his own posse and set out after the wanted men. A second posse, made up of Charleston Cowboys, also took to the field. On March 24, that bunch rode into Contention, and a witness reported that the Charleston contingent was well mounted, well armed and hunting for the Earp posse.

The afternoon of the 24th was warm, and Wyatt loosened his cartridge belt as he led his men toward Iron Springs. To his surprise he did not find Charlie Smith but a gang of Cowboys, who opened fire without warning. Earp jumped from his horse with a shotgun in his hands, while McMaster, Johnson and Doc Holliday wheeled their horses and sought cover. Earp then returned fire and blasted Brocius with his double-barrel shotgun, almost cutting the Cowboy in two.

Amid the gun smoke and mayhem, Wyatt pulled up his cartridge belt and attempted to mount his horse while taking fire from the remaining Cowboys.

He fired in their general direction as Cowboy bullets struck the pommel of his saddle and the heel of his boot. One slug hit with such force that Earp believed he had been wounded.

He somehow managed to partially mount his horse and scampered back to safety, picking up Texas Jack Vermillion as he went. The posse rested, counted their blessings and then rode back toward Tombstone. Although debate raged in the Tombstone newspapers, Earp always maintained he had blasted Brocius, and the fact remained that Curly Bill was never seen in Tombstone again.

That task would eventually fall to Dan Tipton. In any case, on March 26 Earp and his men rode out to Dragoon Summit Station, where they stopped an eastbound train at 1 p. Whether they expected to find a messenger with additional funds, or Ike Clanton himself, is not exactly clear. The Earp posse arrived at Sierra Bonita on March Gage for the posse. Lou Cooley, a stage driver and likely Wells Fargo operative, also provided the Earp posse with additional funds, from the express company.

Wyatt and his seven men now had traveling money and fresh horses. From their vantage point, they could see the approach of any riders from rival posses, and they waited for a possible confrontation. It never came. Sheriff Behan and his men eventually arrived at Sierra Bonita, but they were refused assistance. According to one report, Hooker mockingly told Behan where to find the Earps, but the sheriff rode off in the opposite direction.

The eight-man Earp posse remained in the area for a few more days, but the so-called Vendetta had run its course. With two hostile posses on their trail, Wyatt and his men were outnumbered and knew it would be extremely dangerous to stay in Arizona any longer.

They spent one night in the home of a friend, and the next day sold their horses and saddles, before taking a stage to Deming. From there they traveled by train to Albuquerque and made plans to move to the relative safety of Colorado. Charlie Smith parted company with the group in Silver City and headed back to make Tombstone his home.

He was the only member of the Earp posse to do so. Once in Colorado, the posse fragmented. Doc Holliday went to Denver, while Johnson and McMaster probably reunited with their respective brothers in Leadville. The men had found their sanctuary, as Colorado Governor Frederick Pitkin refused extradition requests from the Arizona territorial authorities.

In time, the law did catch up with some of the surviving Cowboys. Johnny Ringo was shot dead — some say by his own hand — in July , while Ike Clanton was gunned down in resisting arrest. Johnny Barnes was said to have died of wounds sustained at the Iron Springs shootout, while Pete Spence, Fin Clanton and Pony Diehl were eventually convicted of various crimes and all did time in state penitentiaries.

Peter Brand, from Australia, has done extensive research on the Vendetta see his Web site www. This article originally appeared in the March issue of Wild West magazine.

For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today! Gambling was illegal in Seattle in , but three gambling houses existed in a combine run by gambling kingpin John Considine.

The established gamblers paid their fines to the city and county and were prepared to crush anyone who dared enter their territory and open up a gambling house. The Seattle Star ran the following item on November 25 about the new gambler in town:. Since then he had been mostly a capitalist—saloon keeper, gambler, horse breeder, boxing referee, etc.

The Seattle Daily Times had a different approach. Fitzsimmons had knocked Sharkey out. Wyatt, among others, was accused of fraud by the Fitzsimmons side. Wyatt Earp took on a partner in his new Seattle venture, Thomas Urquhart. He was a well-known sporting man in Seattle and had supposedly been around the area for several years. South, near Yesler Way. Urquhart would continue to run the Union Club after Earp went back to Alaska in the spring or summer of Upon learning that Earp intended to open a gambling house, the Considine combine sent a representative to inform Wyatt that he should take his interests outside of Seattle.

The gamblers suggested if he really did intend to open in Seattle, he should check with Police Chief C. Earp arrived in the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona, in , and eventually found periodic work as a law officer. The shootout, thought to have lasted less than a minute, left three people dead: Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton. Afterward, the Earps and Holliday were arrested for murder.

In late November , they were exonerated in court. A month later, gunmen tried to murder Virgil Earp outside a Tombstone saloon; he survived but sustained serious injuries to one arm. Exacting revenge, Wyatt and his posse murdered several cowboys. After leaving Tombstone in , Earp moved around the West, laying low and supporting himself through gambling. In California, Earp trained racehorses and organized and promoted prizefights.

On December 2, , he refereed a heavyweight championship boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey, before a crowd of some 10, spectators in San Francisco.