It doesn't look like much now....
But between 1893 and 1895 Vanderbilt, California, was a boom town with a population of about 400, mostly people related to mining in the area.
Virgil Earp moved here a few years after the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral, which, in the spirit of journalistic honesty, I have to report didn't actually occur at the OK Corral, but instead in an empty lot next to Fly's Photographic Studio. But doesn't that sound wimpy? Gunfight at Fly's Photographic Studio? Who could get into that?
The main "hero" of the Gunfight at Fly's Photographic Studio was, of course, not Virgil Earp, but instead was Kevin Costner, I mean Kurt Russell, I mean Burt Lancaster, I mean Hugh O'Brien, I mean Henry Fonda, I mean Wyatt Earp.
Now, interestingly, Wyatt Earp is a thoroughly modern invention of a person who was not the man who "cleaned up the country, the old Wild West Country, (who) made law and order prevail...." as the 50s TV song went.
Instead, he was a gambler, a saloon owner, a scoundrel, an often lawbreaker, and an occasional assistant lawman. He achieved his modern status because of a book written in 1931, after his death, that fictionalized his life. Nobody in the "old west" had ever heard of him, and when he died, his obituary said nothing about Fry's Photographic Studio, but instead talked about his infamous throwing of a heavy-weight fight, for which he was the referee (can you believe this?), who "saw" a low blow by a fighter who was winning handily, and so who gave the fight to the guy who was being soundly beaten. Everyone howled, and years later the doctor who examined the "injured" fighter admitted to taking money to say the fighter had received a low blow.
But what a story. He was no hero, he didn't "clean up the country, the old Wild West Country." But as John Ford presented so eloquently in his final movie with John Wayne, The Man who Shot Liberty Valence, when it comes to truth or legend, "Print the legend!" So, the legend of Wyatt Earp has lived on.
I have seen all of those movies, and watched the TV show religiously when I was a child in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I also had my Buntline Special (the long barreled 45 that Earp supposedly had), and did my quick draw with my friends religiously. I was good.
Well, so here we are. After the famous gunfight, Morgan Earp was assassinated, and Virgil Earp was subject to an assassination attempt in which he lost an arm. He came to California to recuperate, and one of the things he did was to open this saloon/hotel in Vanderbilt, CA. (Interesting question: how did it get its name?)
It is fascinating to us to experience history like we are doing here, and at other places we have visited. All of the people who, many years ago, had lives like ours in most ways--trying to make a living, trying to find comfort, trying to find meaning, having hopes, having fears, having triumphs, having failures..... And now all that are left are ruins. It feels like we know them in some way, even though we mostly have to make stuff up.
Because most of the time we have no clue who the people were. But this time, we know. Someone who left his mark on history not so much because of what he did but mostly because of circumstances. He was involved in a shoot out over something important at the time, but meaningless now (any lesson there?), where nine men were face to face about six feet apart, and 30 shots were fired in 30 seconds, killing three.
More men died in retribution after the fight than during the fight (any lesson there?). And the story was forgotten until a novelist reawakened it 50 years later, and reconfigured it as a morality lesson. Good versus bad. Men in white hats versus men in black ones. Not in a vacant lot next to a photography studio but in a horse corral.
Yesterday we walked the streets and looked at the sights that Virgil Earp walked and saw 125 years ago, 10 years after the............alright, we'll say it, The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
We will print the legend.
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