Quote:
Originally Posted by PSM
Here's Johnny Ringo's grave near the Chiricahua Mountains and the suspected grave I found near our property.
The BLM Ranger said that the Apaches did bury their dead in this manner. Also, that a soldier would have been returned to the fort and cowboy would be buried near a trail, if possible (like Ringo was since he died so far from his home). Illegals would want the body found so it would be placed near a road or highway. A drug mule would just be left for the buzzards.
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The old stories especially of the old west requires serious detective work to find the truth...Growing up in AZ, Nebraska and mostly Dodge City until my late 20's I call it my home town where my kids were born, married my wife and attended Central School, Dodge City Junior High and Dodge City Senior High Schools, Boot Hill cemetery the original is next to the new recreation of front street Boothill museum, Gunsmoke is the original front street, where the big john longhorn is the west was always a part of my life my dad had one hell of a library and we visited the spots....Las Vegas New Mexico, El Paso Colorados legendary mining camps, Deadwood S.D., Little Big Horn, Laramie, Cheyenne, Tombstone etc....
The biggest letdown was how Wyatt Earp was glorified into a great lawman of the west but to really learn about the Earps through court docs, newspaper articles, the boxing community he was not the model of a good man by any stretch....from Missouri to Wichita to Dodge City to Tombstone then to California to Colorado to Alaska and finally where he died in Los Angeles. He was the quintessential con artists and slimy criminal of his era into the 20th. He was not near the prominent lawman of Dodge City actually men like the Bill Tilghman Jr, Charlie Basset, the Mastersons etc...where the real badasses of the lawless west and Dodge City area but because of the constant self promotion of Wyatt Earp and Josephine his common law wife the town of Dodge could never really dedicate its prominent streets etc...after the true legends that built the town in which the drovers were kept under control from the Santa Fe Trail, Chisolm Trail etc....that all lead into Dodge the Queen of the cowtowns. Men like Chalky Beeson is relegated to a road outside of South Dodge City that I grew up drag racing on we called it Beeson Int'l raceway the main drag was Wyatt Earp Blvd...not because he was a great settler of Dodge City who rode out the rough years year after year in fact he was a part time town Marshall during cattle drive season for three short years...the naming of the main street highway 50 that runs through Dodge after Earp was obviously a business decision based off his fame certainly not off merit.
Wyatt Earp was well known for exploiting people, stealing money, scamming citizens as Marshall, fixing boxing matches for personal gain for example as referee of the famous Fitzimmons-Sharkey Heavyweight World title fight where he declared Sharkey who was clearly faking a low blow the victor of the fight and Fitz the loser by disqualification....he left California to go to Alaska in which his criminal notoriety was so vast that he was met of the dock by the Sherriff of the City and was disarmed his gun is still there hanging with his name on it labelled as unclaimed....to be fair it must be noted that it was not uncommon for men of the time to float in between legitimate work, criminal activities and lawman frequently...however following Earps paper trail he was not the honorable man depicted in film. In fact his reputation was not changed until he had gotten old and was hanging around movie studios in Hollywood telling tall tales of his exploits contrary to truth. He could never even keep his story straight of what type of gun he had used at the OK corral...the gun that has been accused of being the gun based of Earps story telling does not match the evidence and eyewitness accounts of a gun that he carried in his coat pocket not his holster since holsters in the old west were rarely worn in towns by most people of the era but normally by cattle drovers to fend off coyotes, rattlesnakes etc....the laws of the towns to surrender guns to the Marshall were generally cattle towns since cattle wranglers and drovers usually came into the towns after months of living on the ranges and got drunk and shot everything other than them most people never carried weapons.
The stories of the Gunfight at the OK corral are based off newspaper accounts and eyewitness as well as the court documents to determine if the fight was legal....it happened not actually in the corral but down the street the fight was named after the nearest known landmark. The story and movies add some conjecture into how the vendetta ride happened but it is unknown to what really happened and how many were killed. Wyatt Earps legend seems to have been a money making adventure with a fictional retelling of his greatness as a lawman the Hollywood screen writers saw gold the rest is history. The stories are great the movies made us fall in love with the legend of the west. More to follow on Wyatt Earp later