Sunday Stories: A Jewish Gal at the O.K. Corral

Josephine Marcus Earp was a Jewish woman who, for forty-seven years, was common-law married to legendary adventurer Wyatt Earp. Coming of age in San Francisco, a brand-new cosmopolitan city on the edge of the ocean, Josephine left home for a life of adventure. She was a player in the famous O.K. Corral shootout and witness and party to the booms and busts of lawless frontier towns from Nome to Yuma. Seizing on the few opportunities afforded her as a woman on the frontier, drawing on Jewish connections throughout the west, she lived a life like few others—and very few other women. Her story, long overlooked, adds to the account of the Jewish experience in the west.