Virgil Earp

Who was Virgil Earp?

Virgil Walter Earp was a veteran of the American Civil War and was a Deputy U.S. Marshal for south-eastern Arizona Territory and Tombstone City Marshal at the time of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in October 1881. Two months after that shootout, outlaw Cowboys ambushed Virgil on the streets of Tombstone, shattering his left arm, leaving him maimed for life. His brother Morgan Earp was assassinated in March 1882 and Virgil left Tombstone for Colton, California, to live with his parents and recuperate.

Virgil held a variety of jobs throughout his life, though he primarily worked in law enforcement. His younger brother Wyatt, who spent most of his life as a gambler, became better known as a lawman because of writer Stuart N. Lake's fictionalized 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal and later portrayals of him in movies and fiction as Old West's "toughest and deadliest gunmen of his day."