Includes pictures of important people, places, and events.
Discusses the legendary deaths of Wild Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Butch Cassidy.
Discusses the myths and legends surrounding their lives and legacies.
Space may be the final frontier, but no frontier has ever captured the American imagination like the "Wild West", which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorful portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind.
Among the cowboys and outlaws, the 6 most famous men included those (mostly) on the side of the law (Wild Bill, Wyatt Earp & Doc Holliday), and the era's most famous outlaws (Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy). Though they were on two sides of the law, many of them had things in common.
Of all the colorful characters that inhabited the West during the 19th century, the most famous of them all is Wyatt Earp (1848-1929), who has long been regarded as the embodiment of the Wild West. Considered the "toughest and deadliest gunman of his day", Earp symbolized the swagger, the heroism, and even the lawlessness of the West, notorious for being a law enforcer, gambler, saloon keeper, and vigilante.
Wild Bill Hickok headed west as a fugitive of justice, yet that didn't prevent him from becoming a frontier lawman in Kansas, like Wyatt Earp. Hickok also became well known in the West for being a professional gambler and a remarkably quick draw who proved quite deadly in shootouts, like Doc Holliday. When he was killed while playing poker in the mining South Dakotan outpost of Deadwood, he put Deadwood on the map and ensured both his place and his poker hand's place in legend.
The man who has earned an enduring legacy as the region's quirkiest is John Henry "Doc" Holliday (1851-1887), a dentist turned professional gambler who was widely recognized as one of the fastest draws in the West. In fact, the only thing that might have been faster than the deadly gunman's draw was his violent temper, which was easily set off when Holliday was drunk. By the early 1880s, Holliday had been arrested nearly 20 times. Holliday's quirks and sense of humor made him much like Billy the Kid, who had a bullet and a wisecrack for every man he killed. Billy's notoriety only grew when exaggerated accounts of his actions