By David Fleet
dfleet@mihomepaper.com
Ortonville — On Oct. 26, 1881, four lawmen including Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday battled it out with five outlaws in the streets of Tombstone, Az. When the smoke settled three of the gunmen were killed.
Such events from the Wild West are so big they sometimes become legends, and then myths. Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction.
From 6:30-7:30 p.m., Jan. 29, the Brandon Township Public Library will host Andrew Kercher to discuss the myths and realities of the American Wild West. Registration required.
Kercher has a degree in history and philosophy from Albion College and a MS in Historic Preservation from Eastern Michigan University. He has worked at museums around the state, living in the Straits of Mackinac for nearly a decade.
“There’s a lot of ideas of extreme violence in the West such as street shootouts and who was the fastest gun,” said Kercher. “There’s some truth to everything, but consider there were very few shootouts and duels, but it was all very short lived.”
Kercher will discuss the realities of street shootouts in the old west, just who had the fastest gun and how likely was a tombstone needed in Tombstone.
“The West was very dynamic,” said Kercher. “The West was a pressure valve for the United States, as if people did not like what was going on in the East, there’s a direction to go.”
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argues that in 1893 was ‘the closing of a great historic movement, added Kercher
So, from about the 1840s on many people went West into the wilderness that was already, for the most part, occupied by indigenous people. They traveled West for the gold discoveries, land grants and the settling of the plains.
With the movement came a variety of modernization including technology that shaped the eventual end of the West that Hollywood portrays.
But the transcontinental railroad, completed on May 10, 1869 put an end to the big cattle drives since rail cars were less expensive and safer to move livestock. And, the first transcontinental telegraph opened in 1861 dashed the Pony Express which lasted just 19 months.
“There were many different perceptions in the media regarding the West,” he said. “Some were correct and other just wrong.”