U.S. #2869j
1994 29¢ Wyatt Earp
Legends of the West

Issue Date: October 18, 1994
City: Laramie, WY, Tucson, AZ and Lawton, OK
Quantity: 19,282,800 panes
Printed By: Stamp Venturers
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 10.1 x 10
Color: Multicolored

 

In the dim light of a cold October day in 1881, four cowboys accused of horse rustling gathered in a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral. On the other side, a group of lawmen, Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan and their friend Doc Holliday, slowly advanced to stand within six feet of the cowboys. Moments later the deafening roar of gunfire filled the air. When the smoke cleared, three of the cowboys lay dead or dying, and the fourth was seriously wounded. Of the law men only Wyatt Earp emerged unscathed.

 

Few stories capture the imagination like that of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The circumstances surrounding the fight only add to the drama. It seems that the cowboys involved in the shoot-out were cohorts of the Cochise County Sheriff, Johnny Behan, who was a rival of Wyatt Earp’s – politically and in an affair of the heart.

 

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (1848-1929) was born in Monmouth, Illinois. During his long life, Earp drove stagecoaches, worked the railroads, hunted buffalo, prospected, kept saloons, and gambled. In 1871 he was even arrested for stealing horses in Indian Territory. But it was Ned Buntline’s highly fictionalized dime novels that immortalized Earp as a gun-toting lawman.