On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, City Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday squared off against a group of cowboys in Tombstone, AZ. The cowboys (including Billy and Ike Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and Tom and Robert "Frank" McLaury) had menaced Tombstone and the Earps for months. The Earps and Holliday confronted the cowboys after learning they were making drunken threats against the lawmen and refused to turn in their weapons (as required by Tombstone's ordinance against wearing guns in public).

The Earps and Holliday found the cowboys in a lot behind the O.K. Corral and ordered them to surrender their guns. Gunshots rang out. When the dust settled, the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton were dead. Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday lay wounded, and the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" became one of the most legendary episodes in the history of the American West.