The gunfight at the O.K. Corral celebrated its 129th birthday on Oct. 26.  But what is it about this 30-second gunfight that has kept Tombstone alive all these years?

In the first paragraph of the article that ran in the Tombstone Nugget, the paper detailed the now infamous account.

“The 26th of October, 1881, will always be marked as one of the crimson days in the annals of Tombstone, a day when blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttlecock, a day always to be remembered as witnessing the bloodiest and deadliest street fight that has ever occurred in this place, or probably in the Territory,” the paper read.

Ben Traywick, Tombstone’s town historian, said he has spent 40 years researching the O.K. Corral shootout and other aspects of Tombstone history. He said the gunfight draws people because of the unique names involved.

“You have four magic names.” Traywick said. “You got O.K. Corral, you got Tombstone, you got Earps, and you got Holliday. All those four names are unusual, they’re not run-of-the-mill names. That creates interest.”

Everything about this short event in history is rather unusual, Traywick said.  The continual controversy that has come up over it shouldn’t have really happened.

“The Earps were law men acting to enforce the law,” he said.  “There shouldn’t be a lot of controversy to it, but a lot of people take the idea that the cowboys were innocent people.  All they had to do was give up their guns.”

Traywick said that at the time of the incident there were no hard feelings toward the Clantons. Half the town liked the Earps and the other half liked the Clantons.

“The cowboys had a lot of friends here. A lot of people liked them.  The ranchers bought cheap cattle from them. The butchers bought cheap cattle from them,” Traywick said. “They were here long before the Earps even got here.”

Don Taylor, manager of the O.K. Corral and president of the Chamber of Commerce, said the gunfight itself was a rather unusual occurrence.  Sure there were many other gunfights that happened, but this one was different.

“Most gunfights were one-on-one,” Taylor said. “This actually started out as six-on-four, and three men ran away, that left four-on-three. That was a huge deal.”

Also the gunfight was part of a larger issue, Taylor said.  Mexico was threatening war on the United States if something wasn’t done about the cowboys.

Traywick said that the O.K. Corral shootout was the first step toward getting rid of the outlaw problem in the Arizona Territory.

After the Earps left, John Slaughter, a former Texas Ranger, came in and cleared everyone else out.

A year before the shootout, John Clum started the Tombstone Epitaph, Taylor said.  It was his articles that informed America about what was going on in Tombstone.

“During 1881, John Clum joined The Associated Press. So everything he wrote went to San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and New York. That tells you how Wyatt Earp really became a legend in his own time,” Taylor said.

Even though the unusual nature of the O.K. Corral gunfight made it well known, it did not really become famous until 1929, when the first Helldorado Days festival was held — about nine months after the death of Wyatt Earp, Traywick said.

After that, several books and movies were made about the O.K. Corral.  Movies like “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and “Tombstone” helped to advertise the small town and attract more tourists, said Gail Johnson, an employee of the Tombstone Visitor Center and resident of Tombstone for 20 years.

“It’s because of the title,” Johnson said. “They made a lot of movies about that gunfight.”

But the only one they called “The Gunfight at the O. K. Corral” became famous. There were a lot of gunfights in Tombstone that were made into movies, but they didn’t have that title, Johnson said.

While most mining towns faded away into the desert, the gunfight, the arguments and those famous names kept Tombstone alive, Traywick said.

“It has all the classic ingredients of a Greek tragedy,” Taylor said, “Unfortunately they still haven’t got the story right yet, but the movies are always entertaining.”