Doc Holliday and Glenwood Springs, Colorado Part I

Doc Holliday

John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia in 1851. He started his professional life as a dentist, opening a dental office with a partner in Atlanta when he was almost twenty-one after receiving a degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.

However, being a dentist was not in the cards for young Holliday. Within a year and a half of opening up his first practice, Holliday was diagnosed with consumption, or tuberculosis. Doctors informed him that he only had a few months to live. He was told that he might live a little longer if he moved to an arid, warmer climate, so he packed his bags and moved to Dallas, Texas in 1873 and set up shop as an associate to another dentist, Dr. John A. Seegar. Moving to Dallas could not stop his coughing though, and he eventually had to find other employment.

During this period of time, Holliday discovered gambling and found that he had a knack for it. Gamblers at that time had to defend themselves, so Holliday learned the ins and outs of using guns and knives. He also started drinking, perhaps to control his coughing, which might have contributed to his bad temper. It was during this period of time that Doc Holliday started gaining a reputation as a gunfighter and started running from the law. By 1876, he had killed several men, the last one a soldier, bringing the wrath of the United States government on his head.

In 1877, Doc Holliday ended up back in Texas, at Fort Griffin, where he met two people who would play prominent parts in his life, Wyatt Earp and Big Nose Kate.

Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate

Big Nose Kate, or Mary Catherine Elder Haroney, was a “soiled dove” and a dance hall girl who was as fiery in temperament as Holliday. The two had a stormy relationship over the years, breaking up and reuniting. Holliday is said to have considered Kate, who was born in Hungary and was literate and well educated, to be his intellectual equal.

Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and Tombstone

On the run again, Holiday joined Wyatt Earp and the Earp brothers in Tombstone, Arizona. The Earps were facing off against the McLaurys, the Clantons, and the Cowboys, thought to be cattle rustlers and thieves. The Earps, in their position of lawmen of Tombstone, opposed them, although some contend that the Earps used their positions for their own political and financial gain.

After a series of confrontations between the two groups, tensions were running high on October 26, 1881. The men from two groups encountered each other in the empty lot at around 2:30 PM. The shootout erupted at the O.K. corral after Virgil Earp gave an order for the Cowboys to put up their hands. After this, what happened depended on which faction with which the witnesses were aligned. Some think that Doc Holliday fired the first shot.

After about thirty seconds of shooting, three men from the Cowboys were dead or dying, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury. Doc, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp were wounded. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne from the Cowboy contingent and Wyatt Earp escaped unscathed.

The fighting did not stop here.