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One year after the shoot-out, which actually occurred near C.S. Fly’s Photographic Studio six doors west of the corral, Wyatt Earp – whose brother Virgil is Tombstone’s marshal at the time of the shootout—leaves Tombstone for good. Earp spends much of the rest of his life in California, staking mining claims, running saloons, operating at least one whorehouse and offering free advice to the stars of silent Westerns on what frontier justice was really like.
Earp’s first stop in California is San Francisco where he reunites with Josie Sarah Marcus, who he’d met in Tombstone. She becomes his common-law wife for the next 46 years.
After a failed attempt at mining in Idaho, the Earps move to San Diego, which, in 1887, is experiencing a real estate boom. The Earps buy several saloons during their four years in San Diego including the Oyster Bar at 837 5th Avenue. Above it is the Golden Poppy brothel, each room painted a different color and each lady wearing a dress the same color as her room. Some accounts say Earp operates the brothel; others say it’s run by Madame Cora, a fortuneteller.
The real estate boom busts. Earp and Josie move to San Francisco where her family lives. Earp, who enjoys horseracing, buys a six-horse stable. A fan of boxing, Earp is asked to officiate at the heavyweight bout between Tom Sharkey and Bob Fitzsimmons in 1896. Fitzsimmons outboxes Sharkey but Earp stops the match saying Fitzsimmons hit Starkey while he is down. The San Francisco papers brand Earp a crook, an imbecile – and a “human shark.”
“The local club, under whose management the match was held, insisted upon having Wyatt Earp, the well known Arizona pistol shot and ex-faro dealer, as referee, against the protest of Fitzsimmons, who suspected that he was to be jobbed. His suspicions were verified; and he was robbed and so were the men who bet on him.
“There is no manliness or justice about boxing matches under the management of the gang of human sharks and vultures who manage the big slugging matches.”
Source: “Robbed Slugger Fitzsimmons” in the Hanford Journal (Weekly), Volume VII, Number 15, 4 December 1896
Drawn by the Alaska Gold Rush – and perhaps stung by the venom over the outcome of the Fitzsimmons fight — Earp and Josie travel to Nome in 1897. Earp and a business partner open the Dexter Saloon, which also has a brothel upstairs. After a profitable four years, the couple return to California in 1901.
Earp works various mining claims in the Mojave and owns a small home in Vidal in San Bernardino County, 38 miles north of Blythe. The couple summer in Los Angeles. He dies at their apartment at 4004 West 17th Street. Josie buries his ashes in her family’s plot at the Hills of Eternity in Colma. Fifteen years later, Josie joins him. They are the most visited site in the cemetery.
TOP Photo: Wyatt Earp. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Craig Fouts Collection