Wyatt Earp invades Southern California ! Old West comes to L.A.!

So an incredible story of the Old West in California. I'm here with Dr. David DeHaas who along with Don Shaput wrote this incredible book, The Earps Invade Southern California. Remind viewers who Wyatt Earp is. Okay, Wyatt Earp was probably the most famous marshal of the Old West. Mainly known in Dodge City, he was the marshal in the old cow towns. It's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Tombstone is where he really, his legend really exploded. The thing that's interesting about this story is it turns out he spent much more of his life in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Malibu and Beverly Hills. Tell me about the old soldier's home, which is over on the VA facility. Tell me the origin and how they got involved with that. After the Civil War, there were a lot of disabled veterans and they fought for their country. They had nowhere to go, nowhere to live. They couldn't support themselves. They couldn't work anymore. So there was a need for homes for these people. And the first home was in 1866 after the Civil War built in Togus, Maine. 1888-ish, the soldier's home was built on land that was pretty much donated by John Percival Jones and Robert Baker and Arcadia Bandini to Baker, a very famous person. She's known as the godmother of Santa Monica. There's a statue of her at Palisade Park to this day overlooking the pier there. So when did the Earps show up? Who was the first Earp to show up at the old soldier's home? We'll skip ahead a little bit. About 1901, the first decade of the 20th century is when everything started to happen. The Earps spent nearly a decade in L.A. And it's funny, if you look at every other book on White, they don't even mention it. And this was like their biggest part of their life together, there's hundreds of biographies on White, and rarely a mention. Wyatt Earp in November of 1901 is documented being in L.A. at the Hollenbeck Hotel. And then in June of 1902, Allie Earp, all of a sudden is documented moving from Virgil's and Prescott at the time. Allie Earp, his wife, comes out to L.A. And that same month, the father, Nicholas Earp, moves into the old soldier's home. Then early in 1903, Virgil is there too. So all of a sudden, all the brothers, the whole family's there. Adelia Earp, the sister who lived in San Bernardino, is nearby. And they're all documented showing up in L.A. And end of 1901, early 1902, stuff starts to happen. So David, the Earps are congregating in Southern California. The old soldier home's been built. Satel has been created. Santa Monica's waiting in the background. And one of the things that I know the old soldier's home is famous for is the Pacific Electric Red Line balloon line. Tell us what that's all about. Okay. Well, now you have the Santa Monica and 20 miles or 20 miles-ish away, Los Angeles, and now somewhere in between four miles east of Santa Monica and 60 miles west of Los Angeles, you have another city developing. And a lot of veterans are moving. And this is a real desirable place to live. Now you have all this money there. And so people wanted to tap into it. And not only that, Satel, it was a beautiful park, the soldier's home, beautiful buildings and designs. And so tourists wanted to come and visit. I know you mentioned in the book a lot of the kind of the scandals that were happening with people and the pensions and whatnot. Explain a little of that to us. As soon as the soldier home opened, all of a sudden now these guys started selling land around the soldier's home. So the families, the soldiers were there, but their families wanted to be nearby too. So they started selling Satel, the city of Satel developed right next to the soldier's home. And that was Fourth Street. And that's on the cover of our book. This Fourth Street is the famous blind pig where all the illegal stuff was going on. Explain what a Robert Bullock in LA passed a law. You couldn't sell liquor within a mile and a half of the soldier's home. So as soon as they made it illegal to be there, all these bootlegging operations opened. And it's really funny. Speakeasies before there were speakeasies. And we call our book a guys and dolls, West Coast style. And I don't know, you were probably around when the, yeah, the old play, the Broadway musical guys and dolls, and then the movie with Marlon Brando and Fanks. And I was one of my favorite growing up. The music's beautiful. And because it's exactly the same story. Sky Masterson played by Marlon Brando in the movie was patterned after Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp's good friend and Marshall of the Old West. And there was one story we tell in the book about a barbershop where the guy was a barbershop and he sold, but the police weren't around. They had alcohol in the coffee pot. So everybody, they weren't coming for air cuts. As soon as the cops were gone, they were getting drinking coffee from the coffee truck, everybody there. The gambling tables flipping over. Yeah. And then another funny story in the book that we go into is a guy who used to ride around town on a bicycle. And when the police were around, he'd, you know, he's just right on the bike. When he ran into one of the old soldiers on the street, they would put an order in for him and he would ride his bike down to Santa Monica where alcohol sales were legal and pick up alcohol. And then he'd come back and deliver, you know, when the police weren't looking, drive all around town, delivering everybody their, their drinks. But I, at the time, 20, 22 years ago, I had no idea how deep this was. And then the thing that got us going is my coauthor, Don Shopwood. He's, he's published a ton of books. He's a great researcher and he's known as Virgil Earp's biographer. He wrote the seminal book on, seminal book on Virgil Earp. So when you do that, you get a lot of family members writing to you and asking you questions. And he got a question from somebody after he wrote the book that he found in a dump site in Goldfield, Nevada, where Virgil Earp died. Somebody found in the dump site there, a token that said VW Earp on one side, Sawtelle, California, and then on the other side, good for five cents or whatever. Well, VW Earp is Virgil Walter Earp. That's White Earp's brother. And, and all of a sudden, even though Don was Virgil's biographer, he didn't know that Virgil really spent a lot of time there. We knew that the father was there. We knew that the brother Newton was there. We knew that James occasionally appeared, but all of a sudden, it turns out Virgil was there too. And then we looked into further and we found all kinds of documentation that White was there. So all the brothers were there. It was your Rosetta Stone. Yeah. Yeah. It was the first decade of the 20th century. They were all there. And were the Earps famous back then? I mean, was the story of Tombstone and White Earp, I mean, would they be, I mean, I noticed some of the White Earp's coverage is in the newspaper. I mean, were they pretty famous? I was at the Charlotte Hall Museum doing some research in Prescott early on and pulled up an article there when Virgil died. And there's five mentions of his brother White Earp is the famous old West Marshall of the Wild West. His brother White Earp, like five times talking about how, and this is 1905, way before the movies came out, way before the book came out. The Earps were known around the West back when they were alive, back when the, yeah, it wasn't when the book came out in 1903, the books came out in the 1930s. And when the movies came out in 1930, mid 1930s. So that's our look at the Earps invade Southern California, get the book. Thank you, Dr. David DeHaas.