Wyatt Earp, famed lawman of the American West, was born in Monmouth, Illinois on March 19, 1848

Earp became legendary for his role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881) in Tombstone, Arizona, and for his frontier career as a sheriff and saloon-keeper. Though not widely famous in his own time, Wyatt Earp’s exploits – especially as portrayed in dime novels and Hollywood films – made him an iconic figure embodying the Wild West’s law-and-order mythology.