Gone in 30 seconds: How the Clanton gang lost infamous gunfight
It was the 30-second shootout between lawmen and outlaws which came to symbolise the lawlessness of the American frontier.
On October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers faced off against the ClantonMclaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Tombstone had grown into one of the richest mining towns in the south-west after silver was discoverred nearby in 1877.
Wyatt Earp, a former Kansas police officer working as a bank security guard, and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, the town marshal, represented law and order in Tombstone, though they also had reputations as being power-hungry and ruthless.
The Clantons and Mclaurys were cowboys who lived on a ranch outside of town, and they were known to also dabble in cattle rustling and theft.
In October 1881, the long-simmering struggle between these two groups for control of Tombstone ended in a blaze of gunfire.
On the morning of October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom Mclaury came into Tombstone for supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the two men had several violent run-ins with the Earps and their friend, Doc Holliday.
Around 1.30 pm on October 26, Ike’s brother Billy rode into town to join them, along with Frank Mclaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they met in the local saloon was Holliday, who told them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps.
Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.
Around 3pm, the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the ClantonMclaury gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral.
The shootout is thought to have began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton, at point-blank range, in the chest, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom Mclaury’s chest.
Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank Mclaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton.
Billy Clanton and the Mclaury brothers were killed, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne managed to run off.
Sheriff John Behan, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder.
A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were “fully justified in committing these homicides.”
The gunfight was not the end of the conflict. On December 28, 1881, Virgil Earp was ambushed and maimed in a murder attempt by the cowboys.
On March 18, 1882, a cowboy fired from a dark alley through the glass door of Campbell & Hatch’s saloon and billiard parlour, killing Morgan Earp.
The shootout was not widely known to the American public until 1931, when Stuart Lake published his biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, two years after Earp’s death.[
The shootout has been immortalised in many films including My Darling Clementine (1946), Gunfight At The OK Corral (1957), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994).