Few figures in American history evoke a mental image as sharp, while at the same time sparking a debate as heated, as does Wyatt Earp. Bringer of frontier justice and central figure in perhaps the best-known episode in the violent history of the Old West, Earp stands as an American icon, a figure flawed yet heroic, one reluctant to start a fight yet ever ready and able to finish it. One needs but to mention his name and a vision is conjured up of a man standing tall and straight, steely eyed and determined, unconflicted and unafraid. Indeed, it can be argued that Earp is the most American of all heroes, a man for his time and for all time.

Wyatt Earp was born before the Civil War, yet lived long enough to see Charles Lindbergh fly solo across the Atlantic. As a peace officer, Earp cleaned up not one, but two, of the toughest towns in the West, and would then go on to take part in the Yukon Gold Rush, referee a world’s championship heavyweight fight, and serve as a technical advisor on several early Westerns in the fledgling moving-picture industry. Whether one seeks only the truth or blithely settles for the fiction, Earp’s was indisputably a life well lived. And over time, the truths and the half-truths, the legend and the fantasy have all been woven together to create a tapestry of a man whose exploits and memory will forever be too tough to die.

While his legend sprawls across much of the American West, he is clearly best known for that which he did during his relatively short time in Tombstone, Arizona. Drawn to the region by a combination of wanderlust, a desire to make a fortune in the booming mining town, and the opportunity to reunite with his brothers Morgan, Virgil, and the lesser-known Jim, Earp rode into town in December of 1879. Less than a year later, the Earp brothers were building several frame houses on the corner of First and Fremont street.

According to a variety of public documents, newspaper accounts, and private recollections gathered over a period of time, Virgil and his wife, Allie, lived in a house on the southwest corner of First and Fremont. Jim and his wife, Bessie, lived just west of the intersection on the south side of Fremont, while Wyatt and his wife at the time, Mattie, lived in a 14’ x 27’ house on the northeast corner, across the street from his brothers.

It is this house, near the edge of town—indeed, a stone’s throw from the world-famous Boot Hill cemetery—that Wyatt Earp was living when he and his brothers and their friend, Doc Holliday, squared off against the Clantons and McLaurys in the most famous gun battle in American history, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

A century-and-a-quarter later, thousands of visitors and tourists are drawn to Tombstone each year to stand in the very spots where the Earps stood, to walk the wooden sidewalks of Allen Street, and to stroll through the lovingly maintained Bird Cage Saloon and Old County Courthouse. Now, adding to the appeal of the Old West town is the completely restored Wyatt Earp House and Gallery. The restoration of the Earp house was a labor of love for Tucsonan Jim Allen, who was drawn to the project by chance.