The most famous shootout in the Old West lasted about 30 seconds, killed three men, and did not happen at the O.K. Corral.
On October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday faced five armed Cowboys: Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. About 30 shots were fired in roughly 30 seconds, and three of the Cowboys died.
It did not happen at the O.K. Corral. The fight took place in a narrow lot beside C. S. Fly's photography studio on Fremont Street, six doors west of the corral's rear entrance. The name stuck anyway.
Tombstone had grown from 100 residents in 1879 to over 7,000 by 1881 after a silver boom. In April 1881 the town passed Ordinance 9 banning firearms within city limits without a permit, and it fed a feud between the town's Earps and the rural ranchers and Cowboys backed by Sheriff Johnny Behan.
The day before, Ike Clanton had threatened the Earps after a run-in with Doc Holliday. On the morning of the fight, Virgil pistol-whipped an armed Ike and got him fined $25, and Wyatt pistol-whipped Tom McLaury twice. When Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury rode in armed and heard about the beatings, the confrontation was set.
Virgil borrowed a short double-barreled shotgun from the Wells Fargo office and hid it under his long overcoat so the townspeople would not be alarmed as the lawmen walked toward the Cowboys.
Who fired first is still disputed. The Earps said the Cowboys drew their guns; the Cowboys said they raised their hands and were shot in cold blood. A month-long hearing before Judge Wells Spicer found that the Earps and Holliday had acted lawfully.
The fight was the start of a vendetta. Virgil was ambushed and permanently maimed on December 28, 1881, and Morgan was shot dead through the glass door of a billiard parlor on March 18, 1882. Wyatt, by then a deputy U.S. marshal, set off on the Earp Vendetta Ride, killing Cowboy Frank Stilwell along the way.
The gunfight stayed relatively obscure for decades. Stuart Lake's 1931 book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, based on eight interviews and largely fictional, made Wyatt its hero, and the 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral cemented the name in American memory.