The Day He Rode Into Dodge City

Dodge City, Kansas, during the summer of 1876

Wyatt Earp rode into Dodge City, Kansas, on May 19, 1876, a 28-year-old Illinois native who’d just lost his job in Wichita.

He had acquired his position as a Wichita police officer with his fists, and he lost it the same way. Earp’s slugfest with a hotel owner he’d caught bullying a young boy had impressed City Marshal Bill Smith, who decided to hire him instead of jail him. A year later, on April 2, 1876, a political wrangle with Smith came to blows, and Earp was out.

“The year 1876 was a turning point for frontier legends,” wrote Allen Barra. “As Wyatt’s was beginning, two others came to an end.”

On June 26, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull shocked the nation by killing Gen. George Armstrong Custer and more than 250 of his men at the Little Big Horn. Then on Aug. 2, a friend of Custer’s, a poker player holding aces and eights, was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Thus ended the career of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.

“Custer’s last stand and Hickok’s last poker game eliminated two of the most famous men in the West,” Barra noted. “Within five years, Jesse James and Billy the Kid would also be dead. Of the best known figures of the Old West, only Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson lived out the century. (Buffalo Bill Cody doesn’t count in this context: he became famous as a showman, not a frontiersman).”

The Wichita Beacon newspaper had followed Earp’s exploits, including the night of Dec. 8, 1875, when Earp found a drunk passed out near a bridge carrying $500 in cash, a sum which represented about eight months’ wages for Earp. The man awakened in jail with his bankroll intact.

In fact, Earp had such a solid reputation as an honest lawman with nerve that the Wichita City Commission had nearly kept him on the police force, despite his fistfight with his ex-boss. The vote was four to four.

“One more yes vote would have kept Wyatt out of Dodge City at its peak,” Barra noted. “A couple of dozen movies and two of the most successful TV series of all time, ‘The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp’ and ‘Gunsmoke,’ would never have been made.”

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller