Myth Versus Reality

Almost everything the public believes about this fight is the opposite of what happened.

The Earps were not selfless lawmen cleaning up a wild town. They were politically connected businessmen with stakes in gambling and law enforcement, and many people in Tombstone saw them as the aggressors that day.

Doc Holliday, remembered as a cold-blooded gunslinger, was a dentist dying of tuberculosis. He coughed his way toward the grave with little left to lose. The legend and the real October afternoon barely overlap.