Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp

by Ann Kirschner

  But the beach at Nome, once “thick with gold,” had reverted to prosaic sand. One year after the momentous discovery, the pans in the hands of feverish amateurs were yielding flecks, not nuggets, which were hardly worth the effort to retrieve. Unemployment was growing, and emotions ran high, veering between disappointment and hope. “This is a hot town and going to be hotter,” wrote one prospector trying to sustain his optimism. “Hundreds of men sitting around not knowing what to do and hundreds more coming in every day. Labor is a dollar an hour, but one has got to be a husky or strong man to get a job.” In one night, he reported, three men committed suicide and two men shot each other on the street.

  As Josephine had observed in Tombstone, business boomed even after mining opportunities peaked. So did crime: Nome was approaching the point where predators outnumbered prospectors. The same newspapers that wrote breathlessly about Nome in 1899 were now warning about a “reign of terror” that would leave Nome with little or no gold being taken out, overrun by gamblers and disreputable characters from other parts of Alaska and all over the United States. Guns were commonplace, martial law was imposed, and Nome’s highest-ranking military official wrote to Washington that there was “no effective civil organization for protection of life and property.” The owner of the Alaska Commercial Company visited Nome several times that summer, but the company’s internal memos warned that the city was “filled with the riffraff of the country, law and order were disregarded and honest men could scarcely make a living.” One specialty crime involved cutting a hole in a tent and pumping in a powerful dose of chloroform before robbing the sleeping occupants.

  Despite forbidding headlines back in the States—“Murders Frequent and Gold Very Scarce”— people kept coming.

  “The major business in Nome in 1900 was not mining, but gambling and the saloon trade,” reported the Seattle Intelligencer. “Downtown Nome was lined with nearly 100 saloons and gambling houses, with an occasional restaurant sandwiched in between.” The Dexter was at the top of the list. In its second year of operation, the Dexter consolidated its position as Nome’s preeminent saloon for liquor and gambling, aided by Wyatt’s celebrity and his winter shopping expedition, which created a first-class saloon fit for any city in the United States. He and Hoxsie renewed their alcohol license, which required them to swear that the Dexter was more than four hundred feet distant from any schoolhouse or place of religious worship. In the Nome of 1900, that was not hard to do.

  Josephine suppressed her objections about Wyatt’s occupation as gambler and purveyor of alcohol. They were making too much money. Former patrons of the Dexter would recall sky’s-the-limit poker games, with as much as $500,000 in gold riding on a single hand. Nor did Josephine express misgivings about prizefighting, which had become a central feature of Nome’s sporting life and a great moneymaker for Wyatt and Tex Rickard. Although it had already been declared illegal in some states, with well-publicized arrests in New York, Cincinnati, Denver, and Kansas, prizefighting was still hugely popular in Alaska. Nome became a regular stop on the circuit, and the local newspapers carried blow-by-blow coverage accompanied by pen-and-ink illustrations. Wyatt often refereed the fights, and one can only imagine Josephine’s reaction when she heard that Bob Fitzsimmons would be fighting in Nome in advance of another bout with Sharkey.

  Nome’s newspapers faithfully chronicled events attended by the “Nome 400,” which included the high-ranking military officers, business owners, and those who would be considered high society on the outside. Rex Beach mocked this group in The Spoilers when his heroine Helen rejected what passed for Alaska society: “They talk scandal all the time. One would think that a great, clean, fresh, vigorous country like this would broaden the women as it broadens the men, but it doesn’t.” High-stepping around the mud, the saloons, and the smallpox, the Nome 400 found time and place for fancy parties and formal balls at the Nome Standard or the new Golden Gate Hotel. This was a world to which Josephine was never invited, a social whirl with deckle-edge dance cards inscribed by partners for the waltz, two-step, minuet, or quadrille, followed by lavish dinners with oysters and fricassee of lamb and Mumm’s champagne.

  Josephine was barred from Nome high society, but her friend from St. Michael, Mrs. Vawter, often attended these events with her husband, Cornelius Vawter. Their friendship was strained when Marshal Vawter and Wyatt found themselves in opposition. Remarkably, just as Johnny Behan had once passed over Wyatt for the deputy sheriff’s job in Tombstone, Cornelius Vawter refused to appoint Wyatt as deputy marshal of Nome.

  The narrow and stratified society of Nome stood in stark contrast to the cosmopolitan versatility of San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle, or the welcoming community of tiny Rampart. Josephine sought consolation in the company of her family and old friends. In addition to her niece and nephew, her brother Nathan had arrived from San Francisco, and Wilson Mizner and Rex Beach were lively companions. Sidney Grauman was there as well; from his humble beginnings as a newspaper salesman, he was on his way to becoming an entertainment mogul and had invested in the local theater and opera house.

  Josephine found no more kinship in the small but influential Jewish community in Nome than she had in Tombstone. The gold rush pioneers who first initiated Alaska’s Jewish services in Dawson City in 1898 were now successful merchants tied closely to the Alaska Commercial Company. To usher in the Jewish New Year of 5661, the Nome Gold Digger devoted its front page to the opening of the first Nome synagogue, with about sixty celebrants, led by the former head of a Spokane synagogue and using a Torah from an Amsterdam congregation. The services would be traditional, noted the Nome Chronicle on September 18, 1900, because so far from home, “even reformed Jews like to revert again to the strictly orthodox faith.” Claiming the distinction of being the most northern and western of Jewish communities, the so-called Frozen Chosen continued to meet weekly for Friday-night services.

  Despite the general respect afforded to the Jews of Nome, the local newspapers were not above some unsavory jokes, like the prominent cartoon of a “Hebrew Bunkoed on a Whiskey deal,” a hook-nosed fellow who was tricked into paying fifty dollars for a barrel filled with salt water. “Captain vot you tink!” the man complained. “Ven I hopened dot barrel, vot do you tink vas in it? Nothink but salt vater, captain! Vot shall I do, captain? Tell me, vot I shall do!”

  Although the Dexter was prospering, the summer of 1900 generated serious marital tensions. Josephine may have overcome her squeamishness about saloon keeping and prizefighting, but she drew the line at prostitution, as openly tolerated and cheerfully regulated in Nome as it had been in Tombstone and San Diego.

  Nome’s red-light district, “the Stockade,” was in the filthiest part of town. Women paid a monthly fine of ten dollars to the chief of police, who split the fee with the municipal judge and the city treasury to support services such as fire protection and welfare for the destitute. Many of the women had families they were supporting back home, or were wives trying to make enough money to get back to the States. Wearing dressing gowns, the women of the Stockade stood in a row of small frame houses with their names on the door, calling out to the men and staring at the women with smiling indifference.

  Prostitution was not limited to the Stockade. Most of the Nome saloons turned into dance halls at night, with discreet bedrooms upstairs for special patrons. When the Dexter opened its own second-story “club rooms,” Josephine protested loudly and publicly that these rooms were for “games of chance, not frolic.” The presence of her niece and nephew undoubtedly made her more sensitive, since they would bring back to San Francisco the stories of what they had seen and heard in Nome. As she feared, her niece Alice would long remember Josephine’s fury at “the whorehouse above the saloon” and how she ordered Wyatt to get rid of the women.

  It was a summer that revealed more of the famous couple’s weaknesses. Josephine confessed to her friend and biographer Mabel Cason that Wyatt had affairs during their time in Nome. She was alone most
of the time, or with her family. She was gambling heavily—and losing. Instead of betting on the horses—impossible in Nome—she was indulging her fondness for card games, and she had trouble meeting her debts.

  For his part, Wyatt had several run-ins with the law. “Some little excitement was occasioned on Front Street this morning by the occurrence of a drunken row,” reported the Nome Daily News. Wyatt Earp and Josephine’s brother Nathan were arrested in a brawl that started in front of the Dexter, when two drunken patrons got into a fight. Wyatt and Nathan tried to intervene and were taken into custody. Wyatt claimed that his actions had been misconstrued and that he was trying to assist, not hinder, the actions of the deputy marshal. Despite Wyatt’s initial protests of innocence, he entered a plea of guilty and paid his fines.

  As if to keep pace with their local woes, the specter of Tombstone suddenly returned with a vengeance. Wyatt’s youngest brother Warren Earp was shot in Wilcox, Arizona, and the newspapers were quick to link his violent death to Tombstone. Warren’s killing was an unwelcome reminder that even here, Josephine could never escape the notoriety of the O.K. Corral and the enduring interest in the Earps and the cowboys. It was no consolation that this time it was not Mattie Blaylock who was haunting her, but the events of October 26, 1881.

  Inaccuracies flew. The New York Tribune carried a front-page story confusing Wyatt with Warren, Nome with Denver: “Wyatt Earp Shot at Nome; The Arizona ‘Bad Man’ Not Quick Enough with His Gun.” The Tribune reiterated Earp’s reputation as a “dead shot” and a “bully.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other newspapers reported the death of Virgil, not Warren, and repeated other old canards. Some accounts placed Wyatt and Josephine in Phoenix soon after the killing and had Wyatt embarking on a second vendetta to avenge Warren. A Chicago newspaper published a particularly ludicrous article about an Englishman terrorized by Wyatt Earp and forced to eat hot tamales in Alaska at gunpoint.

  The Arctic Weekly Sun commented that Wyatt, unlike his brothers, “seems inclined to break the record and die a natural death.” As if testing that assumption, Wyatt did manage to become embroiled in a second fight that summer, another barroom brawl with Nathan that began with a military policeman trying to stop a fight at the Dexter. “While the soldier is doing his duty, he is assaulted and beaten by Wyatt Earp and Nathan Marcus,” reported the Nome Daily News on September 12, 1900.

  Once again, Josephine found herself struggling to defend Wyatt. From the remoteness of Nome, she was pulled back to the violence of the Arizona Territory.

  Tombstone brought more welcome associations to Nome with the arrival of old friends, beginning with John Clum. The former editor of the Tombstone Epitaph had distinguished himself as a high-ranking official in the U.S. Post Office, now posted to the Alaskan frontier. He was among the thousands of volunteers who rescued survivors and recovered bodies from a deadly avalanche at the Chilkoot Pass. Clum quickly revolutionized mail service in Nome. Before his arrival, people were standing in line for mail for up to two days; the going rate was one dollar an hour for someone to hold a place in the queue. Clum commandeered a small building and hired an army of clerks who worked around the clock to eliminate the large backlog of mail from the Seattle post office. In the summer of 1900, Nome was the largest general delivery post office in the United States.

  George Parsons arrived next. His first glimpse of Nome’s shoreline of crowded tents and shanties reminded him of “Old Tombstone.” Parsons had come to Alaska as the representative of a mining syndicate, but he soon came to consider that summer the “worst tramp of my life” as he fought through the rain and mud of Nome. Always an admirer of Wyatt’s, Parsons visited the Dexter often, which he called “the biggest drinking and gambling place here.” To his pleasure, Wyatt Earp seemed undiminished, still “straight and fearless.” He made no comment about Josephine.

  Clum remarked on the coincidence of their three-way reunion occurring at the same time that the Nome newspapers carried the story of “Apache Geronimo Insane,” caricaturing the former warrior’s wild antics at Fort Sills, Oklahoma. Nineteen years before, the three friends from Tombstone had joined a scouting party that was on the trail of Geronimo. Now they were together in Nome, having “a regular old Arizona time.” Clum recounted later, “It seemed proper that we should fittingly celebrate this reunion of scarless veterans on that remote, bleak, and inhospitable shore—and we did.” They reminisced with pleasure, and Parsons recorded one particular evening on August 30, near the end of that memorable summer of 1900: “We had such a séance last night. That evening with Wyatt Earp would have been worth $1,000 or more to the newspapers.”

  Lucky Baldwin showed up just in time to play a minor role in one of the greatest frauds in American legal history. He had come to Nome to start over again. Once he had been Wyatt’s wildly successful business associate and friend, and Josephine’s not-so-secret admirer. He had covered her gambling debts in San Diego and enjoyed friendly racetrack competitions with Wyatt. But now he was the one who needed his old friends. Many of his ventures had failed, his real estate was heavily mortgaged, and his beloved Baldwin Hotel had burned to the ground.

  Still walking about with his customary wad of $100 bills, Lucky planned to establish a mining operation and to open up a saloon with gambling equipment that he had brought from San Francisco. Wyatt loaned him temporary space, as he had for other old friends. But luck finally seemed to have deserted Lucky Baldwin. “I came up here, expecting not only to go into business largely, but to do some mining on the beach,” he told the Nome Gold Digger. “The beach, however, is not what we supposed it was on the outside.” He came too late to Nome for mining, and he was also too late for gambling: in a town with limited real estate, all the good locations were taken. Then his property was seized by corrupt local officials and held on a trumped-up charge of tax evasion. Marshal Vawter told Lucky that there was a legal claim for $2,500 against him, but that it would be released for $10,000. Baldwin turned to Wyatt for help, and Wyatt quickly arranged for a bond. But Vawter then increased his demands to $20,000—in gold dust. Loyal to his friend, and indignant at the marshal’s extortion tactics, Wyatt immediately raised the gold and even supplied someone to deliver it.

  Lucky was just one victim caught in the grip of white-collar crime that held all of Nome hostage during the summer of 1900. The drama began with the arrival of Judge Arthur Noyes, a political appointee of Alexander McKenzie, a well-placed Republican, who was filling all of the important offices in Nome with his cronies. In addition to Judge Noyes, the most influential of McKenzie’s henchmen was U.S. marshal Cornelius Vawter.

  Their grip on Nome was brief, but the three months of their reign unfolded in Nome-time, under the intense glare of twenty-four hours of daylight. First, Noyes and McKenzie manipulated the law to ambush the most valuable mining claims throughout Nome. In response, the miners sent legal papers secretly to San Francisco by steamship. Speed was essential; the cold season would be soon upon them.

  In the meantime, Nome was overwhelmed by another catastrophe.

  The early summer of 1900 had been unusually warm and dry. The Arctic tundra was bright with sunshine and dotted with colorful wildflowers. The winds shifted, the skies darkened, and on September 11, the rains began.

  Waves invaded Front Street and pushed waterfront cabins aside like bulldozers. George Parsons described the fearful sight of “buildings and homes swept into the ocean in one tangled mess.” Streets became turbulent, debris-strewn rivers. About a hundred people were killed. With winds reaching seventy-five miles per hour, many vessels were unable to ride out the storm and were destroyed. The Skookum, a large barge that had been constructed in Seattle and towed to Nome, dragged its anchor toward the beach, with thirteen men and tons of cargo still on board. Horrified and helpless, most of Nome watched the Skookum “grind her vitals on the sands of the beach.” After an hour of pounding, shortly before midnight, “when the storm and surf were at their height, the Skookum, with a mighty crash, broke
in the water.” The men were lost at sea. Beachcombers salvaged what they could, especially the wood that would be so essential for the following winter’s fuel.

  The storm brought all of Nome together. In a moment of solidarity, in the midst of legal and political battles that made enemies of their husbands, Josephine and Mrs. Vawter found common cause. Under the headline “Help for the Needy,” the Nome News reported, “Mrs. Vawter, Mrs. Wyatt Earp, and Mrs. Lowenstein have collected $80, which they will distribute to those who suffered in the storm. Those who are in need of help will get it if they apply to Mrs. Earp at her residence on the spit, next to the office of Dr. Tiedeman. Only women and those with families dependent on them need apply.” (Nothing else is known of Mrs. Lowenstein.)

  The distraction was brief. Bodies were still washing up on shore when court papers arrived from San Francisco confirming that Judge Noyes and McKenzie had grossly abused their power. But even the dramatic, hand-delivered court order had no effect. McKenzie simply ignored it, and Noyes refused to enforce it. A second messenger was dispatched to San Francisco. This time, he returned with a warrant for McKenzie’s arrest.

  The same political connections that installed Noyes and McKenzie as dictators in Nome protected them now. Judge Noyes was fined $1,000 and reassigned to another court. McKenzie, who knew every Republican president from Grant to Harding, served three months of a one-year sentence before President William McKinley pardoned him on grounds of severe health problems. McKenzie made a miraculous recovery, however, and lived another twenty years. Marshal Vawter’s role was somewhat mitigated, since he had made some effort to protect the miners. Nevertheless, he and Mrs. Vawter were banished to the outpost of Unga, which the Valdez News described as “a little God-forsaken hole out on the Aleutian peninsula.”