Wyatt Earp, (born March 19, 1848, Monmouth, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 13, 1929, Los Angeles, Calif.), U.S. frontiersman. He worked in the 1870s as a police officer in Wichita and Dodge City, Kan., where he befriended the gunmen Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson. He later worked as a guard for Wells, Fargo & Company. By 1881 he had moved to Tombstone, Ariz., living as a gambler and a saloon guard. His brother Virgil became town marshal, and his other brothers (James, Morgan, and Warren) bought real estate and businesses. A feud with the Clanton gang ended in a shootout at the O.K. Corral in which three of the Clanton gang were killed. In 1882 Morgan was murdered, and in retaliation Wyatt, Warren, and some friends killed two men they suspected of the crime. Accused of murder, Wyatt fled to Colorado and later settled in California. Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal (1931), written with Earp’s collaboration, portrayed him as a fearless lawman.
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