The Earps in Mohave County

"When history ain't like the myth, I go with the myth." -Jimmy Mitchell, Los Angeles Examiner newspaperman. October 26, 1881: Thunderous gunfire, as only black powder can thunder, echoes through the environs of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Three men lie dead or dying (as the coroner later reported) "from the effects of pistol and gunshot wounds inflicted by Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, Wyatt Earp, and one... 'Doc' Holliday."

The sharp, chill wind hadn't dissipated the smoke before conflicting stories took root about what had happened and why. Mystery is the prime mover of the still growing Earp myth. A pronounced suspicion exists that Wyatt Earp took the true story to the grave. Not so. It lives in the recorded reminiscences of a very few oldtimers and in thousands of documents. However, this is not the story of thatfamous "gunfight at the OK Corral" (which actually took place elsewhere in Tombstone), but of the idyll lived by the Wyatt Earps during their last years together, 1905 to 1929, in the Colorado River country. It was a period Josephine Earp described as "far more real to me than Tombstone."

I first came to the Earps' beloved Colorado River country in January, 1944, as an aviation cadet at Blythe, California. Only 15 years earlier, rancher Charley Welch of Blythe had gone to Los Angeles as a pallbearer for his old friend Wyatt Earp. I had met Earp seven years before in the pages of Stuart Lake's glowing pseudobiography, Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, which triggered my lifelong interest in the gunfighter and gambler.

Pilot training at Blythe brought me in contact with the first personal acquaintance of Wyatt Earp I was to meet. My instructor and I, on what was known as a "dollar ride," the last flight when training was completed, made a forced landing near Parker, Arizona, and found we couldn't be "rescued" by the Army till the next day.

We spent the night at Joe Bush's Grand View Hotel, in the favorite room of Mrs. Earp, who was then still living in Los Angeles. (She died the following December 19 at the age of 83.) I pumped Bush for all he was worth about the Earps, not knowing that someday I would more or less inherit the voluminous manuscripts of Mrs. Earp and hear accounts of the Earps' lives from many other family members.The Earps in later life spent their winters on the Mojave Desert (their home was listed as Parker, Arizona, in the 1910 census), seeking warm weather and dodging Wyatt's growing notoriety. The rest of the year they alternated between Los Angeles and Oakland. They had left Tombstone together and wandered all over the West and Alaska; in the latter they made their fortune. The Earps' last fling at the big time had been in the 1903 Tonopah gold rush. Then they'd wanIn his later years, Wyatt Earp lived the kind of life he'd have chosen if fate hadn't made him a folk hero.wanting nothing more than to be left alone. Their itinerary? Josephine wrote, “We'd draw straws, best two out of three, to see who'd pick our destination. Then we'd sit and plan like a couple of children...what sort of equipment we'd take along...the fun we'd have when we struck it rich.” She added, “We'd already struck it rich...loose from the grind.”

The Earps

They discovered minerals in the Whip ple Mountains across the river from today's Parker. But before they were ready to settle, they did some additional prospecting up and down the Colorado, for minerals and a ranch.

“Prospecting was in my blood,” Josie recalled. “I never got it out. I can see us yet. Wyatt always outfitted with a spring wagon, packed a tent, folding table, chairs, a mattress and springs, sheet-iron stove, our cooking outfit, prospecting equip ment. I used to grind up every likely stone I found and wash it in my horn spoon.” Wyatt's niece, Estelle Miller, told me, “They really roughed it out there pros pecting. Sometimes they washed in the water they'd cooked the potatoes in.” They hunted as far south as Cibola, Arizona, for a ranch site but never found anything suitable. Eventually, they built a cottage in the village of Vidal in California, later renamed Earp for Wyatt.

While the Earps stalked peace and quiet, writers discovered the gold in Wyatt's background and stalked him, even out on the desert. There Wyatt reluctantly dictated his life story to his good friend John H. Flood, as a favor to silent film idol William S. Hart, who was considering playing Wyatt on the screen. Hart admired Wyatt for his “real” exploits and Earp, who loved Western movies, reciprocated because of Hart's “reel” achievements. But the film project never materialized.

Eventually, the literary effort spun off into Lake's Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, which made Wyatt famous. Wyatt later wrote Hart, “I didn't want to do it in the first place, but am in now and suppose will have to swim out.” For years after there were train connec tions to Parker, Wyatt and Josie would still drive their wagon to Vidal from Los Angeles. His nephew, Bill Miller, told me, “One year he had a team of little frisky mules. Boy, could he make them step, too.” Bill was one of Wyatt's favorite people. They spent months together on the desert, hunting and prospecting.

Bill even fetched Wyatt's bed down to him in Los Angeles during his final illness. “I don't rest easy in any other,” he'd complain. But Wyatt didn't think he was going to die in it just then. Until shortly before his death, his letters showed him still planning to return to his desert home. He left it the last time in mid-1928, dying in Los Angeles on January 13, 1929, in a small tourist cabin at 4004 W. 17th St.

Reminiscences paint word pictures well enough, sometimes eloquently, but I always wished that someone had photo graphed the Earp prospecting trips. It is now obvious someone did, most likely John H. Flood, Jr. After Wyatt's death, Josephine apparently gave most of those photos to Lincoln Ellsworth, the arctic and antarctic explorer, who was a great admirer of Wyatt Earp. Recently Ells worth's widow donated these pictures and other Earp memorabilia to the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.

The photographs illustrating this article are from that source.

Wyatt Earp's later years showed the real man living the life he'd have chosen, I believe, if fate had not beckoned him to Tombstone and made him a folk hero.