Gunfight survivors made way to the Foothills
by Kent Crowley Foothills Reader Columnist
In a half-minute on an October morning in 1881, firearms spat lead, spewed smoke and spattered blood across a Tombstone, Ariz. alley – commencing one of the defining events of the American West: The Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Yet, the Foothills communities of the Inland Valley provided the stage for the final acts of the drama as many of the key players in the story settled out here in time for historians, dime novelists and filmmakers to elevate the spasmodic bloodbath into the epic tale of America’s wild west.
Suffering from crippling wounds in the wake of the war sparked by the gunfight, brothers Virgil and Warren Earp accompanied the remains of their murdered brother Morgan to the Inland Valley where the family had settled in 1864.
The Earp brothers
Here, Virgil – often accompanied by his brother, Wyatt – had driven the Banning Stage Coach down what is today Route 66, delivering mail and passengers to Bear Gulch (Rancho Cucamonga), Lordsburg (La Verne), Mud Springs (San Dimas) and points west.
Despite his shattered arm, Virgil served as Colton’s sheriff and led an ill-fated movement to shift the county seat from San Bernardino to Colton.
After Wyatt avenged his brother Morgan’s assassination with a murderous vendetta throughout the southwest, he periodically returned to the area where he regaled western stars and filmmakers such as Tom Mix, William S. Hart and John Ford with tales of the Old West and secured his own cinematic immortality.
Founders of the West
A friend and political ally of the Earps, mining engineer Richard Gird also settled in the valley after he co-founded Tombstone and served as its first mayor. In fact, the Tombstone courthouse where the Earps stood trial for the murder of Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers was located on “the Gird block.”
In 1881, Gird sold out his mining interests and came to California where he purchased and expanded the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, founded its first newspaper, developed the Chino Valley Railway and co-founded the township that ultimately became the cities of Chino and Chino Hills.
And John Clum, one of the most significant principals in the story of the OK Corral, settled in San Dimas where he lived quietly, raised citrus, taught Sunday School classes at San Dimas Union Church and inspired one of the most important, and overlooked, western films of the 1950s.
Already a legend
Before becoming a devoted friend and political ally of the Earps and founding The Tombstone Epitaph newspaper, Clum was already a legend in the Old West.
Clum’s battles with the American government to bring dignity, justice and self-determination to the Southwestern Indian nations along with his peaceful capture of the notorious Apache chief Geronimo inspired the book “Apache Agent.”
The book was immortalized in the 1956 film “Walk the Proud Land” with America’s mostdecorated World War II veteran Audie Murphy portraying Clum. It was one of the first films to honestly and sympathetically portray the plight of the Southwestern Indian nations during America’s westward movement.
