Wild West Gunfighters. The truth about the legend. Earps, Holliday, Hickok, Hardin, Bass Reeves.

The Western movie gunfight was a staple of every “Gunsmoke” episode and “Have Gun Will Travel” and almost all of the so called “adult” Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. A basic premise was that the code of the West was that the Lawman or “Good Guy” had to let the bad guy draw first and then beat him to the draw and end the fight with one accurate shot. With the one exception of when “Wild Bill” Hickok faced off Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri, the typical TV or movie shootout is not a part of Frontier history. Jim Dunham, Director of Special Projects and Historian for the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia and current president of The Wild West History Association explains what the real gunfighter and shootouts were like.