For the past quarter-century, one of the greatest joys of serving as the executive editor of True West magazine has been discovering local historians who dedicate themselves to research and unearth small gems we never knew existed. And I must tell you that today, we have one of those truly remarkable stories to share, because it addresses a mystery that has fascinated me for my entire life. I have been studying the story of Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and the famous gunfight at the O.
K. Corral in Tombstone for a very long time—certainly for a solid 35 or 40 years, thinking about it seriously. And throughout all that time, there has been a significant gap in the story regarding what happened before Doc came to Tombstone.
Of course, if you have seen some of the films that have been made about this period, you would come away with the idea that Doc and Wyatt were inseparable, that they were always together, and that Doc Holliday was a sort of loyal puppy dog following Wyatt Earp around wherever he went. That picture is not accurate at all. It is a romanticized fiction that does not line up with the historical evidence.
What we know, at least before the new research conducted by a man named Brad Courtney in Prescott, Arizona, is that the Earp family traveled in a wagon train from Las Vegas, New Mexico. It was along that journey that they picked up Doc Holliday—whose real name was John Henry Holliday—along with his companion, a woman who was then living with him, Kate Elder, better known to history as Big Nose Kate.
They arrived in the town of Prescott, Arizona in November of the year 1879. And of course, all of the Earp family members were determined to continue on their way to the booming new mining town in the southeastern part of Arizona Territory called Tombstone, which promised wealth, opportunity, and of course perhaps some danger. They were all eager to get there.
But there was a complication in the form of the Virgil Earp was living in Prescott at the time. In fact, Virgil had had his own gunfight there, which allowed him to prove his worth and his abilities, so to speak. That is a separate story, and we will not dive into it right now, but importantly, he had become a constable in Prescott, and it was that role, that experience, and the status that he gained there that qualified him to later serve as the city marshal in places like Tombstone.
So, Virgil was already there, established in Prescott with his wife, a woman named Allie.
So the rest of the Earp family, including Wyatt, James, and all the others, they all departed Prescott and traveled onwards to Tombstone. But the rather interesting notable part of this story is that Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate did not go on to Tombstone with the Earps. Instead, they remained behind in that “Mile High” city, the city of Prescott, Arizona.
It is a place that was the newly established capital of the area, fairly brand-new territory in terms of its status, and the records indicate that they simply loved living there. The climate was fantastic, which was a serious consideration for a man in Doc Holliday’s condition, and it is claimed that Doc very much enjoyed the faro tables that were spread throughout the town. So he was doing quite well there as a gambler, frequenting the saloons and spending his nights at the card tables.
Now during the prolonged gap between the Earps’ departure and Holliday’s eventual appearance in Tombstone, we do not know with absolute confidence what happened every single day to Doc Holliday. But we do know one crucial thing that happened, and we know it from a later source. Late in her life, Big Nose Kate, whose real name was Kate Elder, ended up spending her final years in the Pioneer Home for the elderly in Prescott, Arizona.
She was rather eager to exploit the opportunity to tell her story to anyone who would listen, primarily because by that time, as important figure was Wyatt Earp had become, largely due to the book written by Stuart Lake and other publications that followed. It was in Stuart Lake’s book that the name “Big Nose Kate” was immortalized in a somewhat mocking manner, and that nickname stuck to her permanently, no matter how much she hated it. She always insisted and maintained that she had never been called that name during the time, and that it was an invention of the author.
So she was very eager to talk to someone, to tell her version of events, and to set the record straight, but she was also motivated by money—she essentially wanted to be paid for her stories. Therefore, in her old age, she gave three different interviews in which she essentially tells a consistent version about the next part of these events.
I will quote her here. “In a short time Long, Doc quickly received a letter from Wyatt Earp.” The letter stated that Tombstone was a very lively and thriving city, and that Doc could have a great deal of success there practicing his original profession as a dentist.
She continued, “A few days after the letter arrived, we set out together. I did not go to Tombstone though. I told Doc, ‘If you are going to tie yourself up with the Earp brothers, then go ahead and do it.
But as for me, I am going to head toward the mining town of Globe.'” Globe was another rival mining town located to the north of Tombstone, a separate community with its own opportunities. Doc responded to her, “Well, I will join you in Globe within a few days too.
I do not think I will like the situation down in Tombstone very much.” So the two of them traveled together as far as Gillette, which is yet another mining town along the route. They were forced to spend a night somewhere there, but they had a hard time finding a place to stay.
There was no hotel in that place, and no boarding house of any sort. Eventually, they went to the superintendent, a man who she called Mr. Weber.
He gave them a bed in his own office. She described it as a good bed, too. There was a store nearby, and they had a meal sort of like a breakfast in the morning.
Then they set out again, with Doc heading on his own way towards Tombstone, while she went on toward Globe. She did not hear news from Doc for quite some time.
Now, the question that we have to consider is what is wrong with that narrative as we have the evidence. The first problem is that it makes the situation seem approximately as if you could wake up in the morning, and then take one many of the roads leading plainly to Globe. Doc went on his way to Tombstone.
But it is not that simple, as those who know the geography of Arizona understand. If you have ever been in the area around the formerly they were in the mountains, down south of the modern town of New River, you know that there is no way you can go from Gillette, which lies in the inside the Bradshaw Mountains, directly to Globe in a straight line. You cannot simply cross the arid and mountainous terrain to get from one point to the other.
It is physically possible to do so, we could make that drive today, if you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle and if you can use a couple of relatively newly built bridges to cross over the rivers and canyons. But in 1879, for a couple of people riding on a stagecoach, it was an entirely different matter. You would have had to travel all the way to Phoenix, and in fact, you would have to go south of Phoenix down to place then known as Maricopa Wells.
Then travel through Sacaton and other stops along the way, and approach the town of Globe from the south, making it a much longer journey than she implies.
So why focus on the fact that they ended up together at her? In Gillette, and she left from there, seems to validate the idea that it is logically consistent with the route that she would have needed to complete. However, it doesn’t match the sense of the fact that they both would have had to continue to travel for a significant and cut.
Furthermore, and this is crucial, another element that doesn’t fit the logic is that Doc did not go to Tombstone at that time at all. He did not behave in a way consistent with what she says in the story. The historical record and new research indicates that he actually went back to Prescott you that his route of travel look.
At this point, we must introduce the new part of the story. Doc boarded a wagon train stagecoach and traveled all the way back to Las Vegas, New Mexico, which was the place that the Earp’s work had initially picked him up. Why did he do that?
To settle his outstanding debts there. He had left business unfinished, and he needed to return to clear the ledger of the accounts. It is a trip of about 538 miles from Prescott back to Las Vegas of New Mexico, which is a monstrous distance by stagecoach.
We have all grown up with a certain fantastical idea in our heads of holding a stagecoach looks like. We all imagine it as the classic Concord coach—a grand, elegant vehicle with a leather suspension and a rounded body that you see in countless of movies. But we need to wonder as a historians about the experience for a man in Doc physical condition.
This it was a brutal journey. Doc was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a disease that was called in those days “consumption.” There was no cure for it, and the same illness had already killed his mother prematurely, and it had also taken the life of his sister, so he had a very good reason to be fearful of its progression.
The doctors had told him, it was not sure, that he was not expected to live many more months, and they suggested that he relocate to the west to see if the climate would help him extend his days. Now he was in Prescott in comfortable circumstances where he had a home, friends, and a source of income from gambling, but the idea that he suddenly boarded up a stagecoach and headed back across the desert was seems almost suicidal given the terror. There is a rumor about the local time that today persists, and in fact, the author, Stuart Lake, actually wrote about this idea in his books.
Lake claimed that Wyatt Earp had told him that Doc was extraordinarily lucky. What is the cards in Prescott and had one a fantastic sum of money at the far table? How much did he win?
Some sources say $40,000. That figure, however, is likely an overstatement and has been diminished over the centuries intervened. $40,000 dollars in the 1880s would easily be the equivalent of more than a million dollars in today’s buying power.
The more accepted estimate is that he may have won about $10,000, which is still a great amount of money for the time period. However, none of these profitable figures are fully verified, and we are the trying to fill in the gaps the best we can.
Here is another angle to consider the cost of the stagecoach trip, this long return trip of 538 miles cost $70, which inflation would be about $2,000. Yet as I said before, we have this vision of this luxurious Concord stagecoach journey, but the reality of it might have been something far more punishing. Then finally, after all of this emerging it from the research, various scholars have consulted to learn more.
Many historians of the Old West, and colleagues of mine who are sophisticated researchers, have had the chance to weigh in on this new information from Brad Courtney. One such man is the writer Gary Roberts, who has produced the essential reference book on the life of Doc. He is an authority in the field.
Another writer, Mark Lee Gardner, is currently at work on a book that will focus on the pair of Doc and Wyatt during this exact formative period. One man, Mark Lee Gardner, developed as a narrative—a first-person account of that stage and travels across long distances. He based his reconstruction on a primary source, a real description of the Star Line stage coach that operated a route between Pre-scot Arizona and Santa Fe New Mexico.
The trip, as he described it, took a total of about 86 hours in the year, and the cost is it has already said was about $70.
If you are imagining, like I always did, a luxury of Phase that glimpsed in movies, listed to this description with your full attention. The travel journal states that left Santa Fe. They departed on a Monday afternoon at noon, and it was not until Wednesday at seven in the morning.
They had been on stagecoach that was open air route. It was called that of a mud wagon and it had a cover, but they were, the stage was a comparatively small—it had a top of some kind, and it was intended to be a bit more comfortable than a typical open wagon. But the writer who endured the journey describes it is powerful disclaimers.
The mail was unusually large that trip, and they forced an additional passenger to climb aboard passengers luggage into that tiny open two-seat vehicle. The coach was loaded to capacity, maximum capacity with the mail and everything else. The 18-inch of the seat free of bulk mail was all that the writer had as his own personal territory.
During the nights, they trying to improvise a comfortable couch by resting his head at a 45-degree angle from his shoulder to accommodate a better, and during the daylight, when he was tied from maintaining one position, he would pop, brace himself by drawing his legs up, or he would place his arm behind the back of the seat, or around. At the start of the trip, he tried to extend his legs outside of the vehicle of the coach, but the driver said that this was terrifying the mules. So he had to remain in that crowded, uncomfortable position for the entire trip.
That is a very specific account, it is incredibly vivid. My God, think about the suffering of this man we know as Doc. He is suffering from terminal tuberculosis and his body is wasting away from the disease.
And he is on board one of these stage coaches from hell. But here is where it gets interesting, our editor Stuart Rosebrook, who now serves as the new executive director of the Charlotte Hall Museum and is our own editor—and we are so very proud of him for all his accomplishments. He did not accept this aspect of that description (the journey he was more willing to push deeper) and so he went out into the archives to look for more evidence.
And he was able to find something that speaks to these people. But before we get into that, we need to back up to establish the timeline and sequence of the relevant travel.
We believe that Doc Holliday left Prescott to make his journey accommodations back to Las Vegas in March of 1880. However, the stagecoach was conducting at the route was reported not from the period of August 8, 1879. So it was the summer before, a significant number of events happened in that narrow window during the following months of six to eight.
The railroad was advancing, lines quickly via Arizona, and it was reaching completion. In fact, by the time Doc traveled back to Las Vegas, he was able to complete only a portion of the journey. Travel by stage before he transferred the comfortable rail for the remainder.
The path of that railroad was traveling from Las Vegas to the northern region of New Mexico, and it made connections to Albuquerque, so that significantly altered the route he would have had taken.
So, with this in mind, the machine. Stuart discovered an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican, dated February 27, 1880. The newspaper stated that the agent of Santa Fe had received six Concord stagecoach from the railroad on the previous Tuesday, and they would immediately begin replacing the common stage coaches that were traveling over the route.
So this provides the debate among the historians. One group of the finest the historians law after the authentic, and the accounts of the previous voyage to 1879, it’s safe that he rode on that open-air-riding two-seat vehicles that had been described so vividly. The other group court, Stuart and the rest of the team point out that by March 1880, six Concord coaches had definitely arrived, and so it is highly probable that Doc had access to a better class of transportation than the poor travelers of the previous year.
And then when he reached Santa Fe, he could have transferred to the railroad, taking his train the rest of the way to Albuquerque and then to his eventual return to Prescott. All this information is new and fresh to the public, and it is exceptionally fascinating.
In our special issue, which we published recently, we focused on “Doc Holliday in Prescott.” In that magazine, we included a map of all the stage stops that he would have travelled along, at a route he would have traveled through the terrain. I must say, I love maps and think we have to speak about this one for a moment.
They stopped at the town of Zuni. If you recall, when the Earp wagon train had traveled through Zuni on the way to Arizona originally, the travelers had been forced to linger there for extraordinary time. The Apache were at war and the stage had to remain safely in the town unable to move.
Victorio was leading raids and the settlement, and so they were forced to spend several extra days in the town, waiting for the danger to pass. I adore these kinds of small details that brought history to life and help me to understand the texture of the world they had lived in.
The route continues through, they go to Horsehead Crossing, and then to Brigham and Young, before finally descending into settlement. To Prescott, once more. We have the full map of that conduit, the detail is fantastic.
Now, my favorite part of the story happens after Doc Holliday had come back to Prescott for the second time. Remember, it is possible that Kate was in a Globe by then, following her own path. Doc returns to Prescott and he goes the boarding.
He takes up a new, then at Elliott’s boarding house, and a given observed: the house located on North Montezuma Street, just north of another street named Cortez. Now, if you have ever visited Prescott, and I advise strongly recommend a trip to that wonderful city with its lovely square and heritage, you could see this ongoing for yourself. If you stand on the town square, near the courthouse, and you look north, you will see Cortez Street running along the west side of the square.
About three to four blocks further down that lane, you will see the address for the boarding house Doc was staying at.
This is all documented in the federal census for Yavapai County in 1880, and the census reveals that he was living a man named John J. Jasper. That name caught my attention when I was researching, because it struck a chord with the soundtracks.
Why does it seem familiar? John J. Jasper.
I recall.
It is an intricate to the history of the territory that, as it happens, the acting governor was the explorer John Charles Frémont, a man of grand reputation. But he was absent most of the time, and he never did his actual job. He was always away involved with other ventures—often pursuing his own interests, financial or military or mining.
And so the burden of running the territory of Arizona fell upon the shoulders of his next-in-command. That man was John J. Jasper.
So now we can assume that the historians are interested in a peculiar question. Did Doc Holliday, the dentist and expert gambler, was that the ultimate era of the queen of his trade, and a notorious heavy drinker, reach such a depth in his social standing that he was living with the Governor of Arizona? That honestly does not seem to be an ideal connection, does it?
Under normal circumstances you would not imagine them together. But as the census shows, this is a fact. The acting governor of the territory of Arizona was roommates with Doc Holliday.
We have no direct proof of how they got along or arrange their shared domestic accommodations, but the truth is documented in black and white on the official record.
But it did not stop there. Doc always continued to enjoy the local life. He enjoyed his leisure time in the cabinet salon and his saloons in town, and the Cabinet was one of his favored spots.
If the name seems confusing to you, later changed that name to the Palace Salon. It was located in the middle of Whiskey Row of Prescott, which is famously one of the most prominent (and historically best) entertainment districts of the frontier. It is the most likely center of activity where he was headquartered, and where he could set his faro game and attract the players.
Finally, as the summer of the year 1880, he turned his thoughts once more. Southward to the direction of Tombstone. This time he passed far through Gillette, which as you recall was the same place he had separated from Big Nose Kate the earlier.
He returned through there on the road that took to them. They had traveled together before with that daring adventure. He passed through the town of Phoenix, which was a tiny, dusty place whose population was only just over 2,000 inhabitants according to the census of the day.
He then relocated due to Casa Grande and finally to the large kind of Tucson, where he narrowed gambling and entertaining himself at the tables. At the final, after this long, long journey, he entered the town of Tombstone, Arizona, in September of 1880.
The Earp family had been in Tombstone for about one full year before he arrived in the town. By that time, already deeply involved in all sorts of feuds, and political tensions that the Earps had built up. It was those that he would be swept up in when he arrived.
On September 18, 1880, his name was entered into the board of registrations voters, and so his presence was official. Then, 13 months after that, the famous adventure began; he was involved in a confrontation with Wyatt Earp in the side yard of a home on the edge of the town, where Kate, returned from Globe, was staying with Doc at the same time. That episode would last for 30 seconds and historians still talk about it and argue about its consequences to this day, but that is the story you will all hear plenty about.
What’s important is that today, now you know a great deal more—the result of the diligence and community of Brad Kurt and the many other historians I have cited.
I also want to express special thanks to Tom Jonas who sketched such a rewarding valuable– his illustrations alone are worth the issue price, and the maps make these journeys tangible. When you see the map, you can trace the distance a man would cover. And we should be reminded of that, Doc Hoy was a world, T.
E. was a traveler, a man who was moved by a certain restless interior animal despite his illness, he traveled thousands miles in a dangerous and rugged country—a man we cannot forget. I am Bob Boze Bell and I hope you have enjoyed this story of the new evidence about the trail of the deadly dentist.
It’s a story that you will not find documented in many other places, and it shows the power of history to change our old assumptions.
