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Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 - January 13, 1929), was an officer of the law, gambler and saloon keeper in the Wild West. He is most known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral along with Doc Holliday, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp.

Wyatt joined the Wichita, Kansas police force, but he was discharged in April 1876, following an altercation involving him and another officer. Earp joined the police force in Dodge City and, in 1878, he was appointed assistant city marshal under Charles Bassett.

In September 1879, he left Dodge City and three months later reached Tombstone, Arizona, where he became a farmer. After Wyatt's brother, Virgil Earp became city marshal of Tombstone, he recruited Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp as "special deputy policemen."

Phineas Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury sold livestock to Tombstone. Wyatt Earp was convinced that the Clanton and McLaury brothers had been selling stolen livestock, and had stolen one of his horses. Earp also came into conflict with sheriff John Behan because of a fight involving a woman.

During the O.K. Corral gunfight, Wyatt Earp shot Frank McLaury in the stomach.

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John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 - November 8, 1887) was an American gambler and gunfighter who is usually remembered for his associations with Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

He was born in Griffin, Georgia to Henry Burroughs and Alice Jane Holliday. His mother died on Sept. 16, 1866, from tuberculosis. Three months later, his father remarried Rachel Martin. Shortly after the marriage, the family moved to Valdosta, Georgia.

In 1870, John Henry began dental school. On March 1, 1872, he received a degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia. Later that year he opened a dental office with Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta.

Not long after beginning his dental practice, he contracted tuberculosis. He was given only a few months to live although it was thought moving to the drier western part of the United States could help to reduce the deterioration of his health.

His first stop west was Dallas, Texas. He soon began gambling, and realized this was a more beneficial source of income. After getting into a disagreement and killing a man, Holliday quickly fled to Jacksboro, Texas.

In the years that followed, Holliday had many more such disagreements, fueled by a hot temper and an attitude that death by gun or knife was better than that by tuberculosis.

Doc Holliday retired to the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado where the sulfur present in the spring stripped his lungs of healthy tissue. In the end, it was tuberculosis that got "Doc" Holliday. Fifteen years after the doctors gave him only months to live, he died peacefully in bed in Glenwood Springs, Colorado after converting to Catholicism. Dying in bed, his reputed last words were, "This is funny" while looking at his bootless feet. No one ever thought that he would die with his boots off.

In an interview in 1896, Wyatt Earp had this to say about Doc Holliday: "Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun that I ever knew."

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Virgil Walter Earp (July 18, 1843 - October 19, 1905), born in Ohio County, was one of the men involved in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In February 1860, Earp married Magdalena C. "Ellen" Rysdam (November 25, 1842 - May 3, 1910). A year later, in 1861, after the start of the Civil War, Earp joined the Union army. In October 1880, he became city marshal of Tombstone, Arizona.

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Morgan Earp was the younger brother of Wyatt Earp, the famous gunfighter. He was wounded in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and later shot in the back while playing pool by Clanton supporters. His death sent Wyatt on a bloody rampage across America's southwest, killing anyone he felt was connected to Morgan's death.