The gunfight near the OK Corral

Having completed the additional house rules for "The Old West Skirmish Rules" I needed to test them which I did with the game at the local modellers club.  The results were far too bloody so I decided to re run a historical fight where there is a lot of information to hand to give me a bench mark in case more adjustments were required.  That fight would be the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Tombstone, Arizona Territory, October 1881.  Except it wasn't at the OK Corral it was near the back gates to the  corral, along the street some 80 yards or so and into a vacant lot.  I suppose "The Gunfight near but not actually adjacent to the OK Corral" doesn't have quite the right ring to it.  

In fact a lot of what I thought I knew (mostly from movies to be fair) is wrong.  Luckily as the most iconic gunfight in western history it is pretty well documented and a lot of useful details are easily found online.  The best starting points, for me at least were the Sanborn Insurance map of Tombstone (dated 1886 so five years after the shootout) and a couple of web sites; The Wyatt Earp Explorer (John D Rose has put a huge amount of work into this site), and (believe it or not) an academic site with the trial transcripts of the attempt to convict the Earp's of murder for the killings.  The main Wikipedia article is also useful in establishing a basic narrative to hang more detailed information on.  This was enough for me to be able to create a scale recreation of the immediate area where the fight occurred.

The layout of the building plots in block 17
(image from John D Rose's excellent website)

The things we know for certain are that the fight took place to the southside of Fremont Street between Third and Fourth Streets in a vacant lot.  We can gauge the size of the building lots from an 1881 Map of Tombstone which shows the layout of building lots on the city blocks (see above).  I was interested in block 17 bounded by Fremont Street to the North, Allen Street to the South and Third and Fourth Street to west and East respectively.  The action was amongst the buildings in lots 1- 4 with lot 6 giving a rear access to the OK Corral.  The blocks were 300' square and had ten building lots along the north and south sides and two lots in the centre of each of the east and west sides.  All of these lots were 30' wide and the majority were 120' deep.  The exception are two "key lots" on each of the north and south sides (lots 11, 12, 23 and 24 above) which were 150' deep.  

The relevant part of the Sandborn insurance map

This is confirmed in part by the 1886 Sandborn map (above) which clearly shows the building in this block.  This in conjunction with period photos allows for a fairly accurate picture of the site of the gunfight to be put together.  The area of the gunfight is highlighted in green above showing the action spilled out onto Fremont.  The brown buildings are adobe construction, the yellow ones are timber framed.  The number in the corner shows how many floors and each building has a brief description of it's use.  For example Dwg for dwelling and Gro for grocery.  Buildings with a cross running from corner to corner are stables.  The Sandborn maps are accurate scale drawings which give these details of the construction, roof type, windows and use of buildings etc as this information was important for fire risk assessments and is pure gold for recreating the fight site.

All of the contemporary records place the fight in the open space between Fly's Photographic Studio and lodging house and the Harwood house with the action spilling out onto Fremont Street.  Wyatt Earp drew a sketch map in the decade before he died placing the action further east along Fremont but this is at odds with all the other evidence. and that was over forty years after the event.

After this things become a little more hazy, but this period photo helps a little.

Another excellent item from Wyatt Earp Explorers
This partially shows the buildings along Fremont Street

Note that in the above picture there are two houses between Fly's and Third Street on lots 1 and 2 (confusingly numbered 3 and 3a) rather than the single dwelling shown on the Sandborn map.  However, I'm sure that this image is fairly contemporary with the fight as the recorders office (marked 10) was replaced by a brick built City Hall, in 1882 I think, and definitely by 1886 when the Sandborn map was drafted.

The information above was sufficient to allow a start on building the terrain.  The really confusing part comes next determining who was stood where and what weapons were used on that fateful day.  So thats what I will cover in the next post.