The O.K. Corral gunfight didn’t take place at the O.K. Corral.

  • O.K. Corral site in Arizona
O.K. Corral site in Arizona
Credit: alexandra buxbaum/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

November 20, 2025

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A catchy name has a way of sticking — even when it’s not entirely accurate. Presumably because “Gunfight in an Alley Behind C.S. Fly’s Photography Studio” was too ungainly a moniker, one of the most iconic events of the Old West is known by another name: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Lasting just 30 seconds on October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, the brief shootout between lawmen and outlaws has been enshrined as a vital part of Americana: Good guys on one side, bad guys on the other, and justice prevailing in the end. Yet as is the case with a lot of folklore, many details have been flubbed over time — including, notably, the fact that the shootout didn’t actually take place at the O.K. Corral, but rather down the block behind a photography studio on Fremont Street near Third Street.

Pitting lawmen brothers Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp and their friend Doc Holliday against outlaws Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury (also brothers), and Billy Claiborne, the brief fracas ended in the deaths of Billy Clanton and both McLaurys. The gunfight was preceded by a number of violent run-ins between the two groups, who were battling for control of Tombstone. The Earp brothers and Holliday, all of whom survived (though only Wyatt Earp was uninjured), were later charged with murder but found not guilty, with a Tombstone judge ruling they had been “fully justified in committing these homicides.” They don’t call it the Wild West for nothing.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

The California gold rush wasn’t America’s first gold rush.

Nor was it the second: Half a century before 300,000 prospectors descended upon California in search of riches, a boy named Conrad Reed discovered gold in his father’s field in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in 1799, without realizing what it was. The family used what turned out to be a 17-pound gold nugget as a doorstop for three years until a jeweler identified its true nature and set off America’s first gold rush. The second rush was in Georgia in 1828. Because it took place on Cherokee land and led to the forced relocation of thousands of Cherokee people, it became known as the Great Intrusion. 

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