At 21, Wyatt took his first job in law enforcement in Missouri, but his work as a constable ended abruptly when he was accused of embezzlement.

Wyatt skipped town and spent the next few years drifting the Great Plains, taking up work on the other side of law as a horse thief, gambler, and all-around carouser.

He ended up in Dodge City where he became assistant marshal.
A few years later, Wyatt moved to Tombstone to work alongside Virgil as a deputy—also running a Faro game on the side.

In Tombstone, he met his future wife Josephine, who had just run away from home with an actor in a traveling troupe.

Wyatt and Josephine fell in love, and she would be his traveling companion and adventuring partner for the next 49 years.
After the incident at the O.K. Corral, the brothers skipped town and went their separate ways (but not before killing two more cowboys on their way out).

In 1902, Wyatt and Josephine heard talk of a town called Tonopah — hardly 2 years old by then — in the Nevada desert. Gold and silver had been discovered, and the camp of 40 men in early 1901 quickly became a community of more than 3,000. The couple made their way to Nevada, arriving in Tonopah during a blizzard.

Once established, the old gunslinger took up work as a deputy marshal and co-founded a saloon called The Northern; the watering hole saw good business with his famous name attached to it.
In summer 1903, Wyatt and Josephine decided they’d had enough of Tonopah. They sold their share in The Northern and slowly made their way to California, prospecting throughout Esmeralda County on their way.
Goldfield began as an offshoot of Tonopah. Perhaps one of Nevada’s most famous boomtowns, Goldfield would grow into Nevada’s largest metropolis by 1906 with 30,000 residents - its sister town 30 miles north would hardly reach 5,000.

Virgil Earp and his wife Allie moved to Goldfield in 1904. Virgil decided he too would start a saloon, but found he didn’t have enough cash in a town where everything was expensive. He turned to gambling and soon found himself down to his last few dollars.

To make ends meet, Virgil returned to law enforcement, serving as deputy sheriff and working security at a saloon called The National. These positions were honorary, however: Virgil was in his early 60s and suffered chronic pain from his hard-fighting lifestyle.
In 1905, Goldfield suffered a pneumonia outbreak, and Virgil died at the age of 62. His last words to his wife on October 19 were, “Light my cigar, and stay here and hold my hand.”

Josephine and Wyatt continued wandering the West, doing what made them most happy: prospecting. They settled in California, and toward the end of Wyatt’s life, set to work memorializing the lawman’s career.

Wyatt and Josephine spent their summers in Los Angeles, hobnobbing with the Hollywood set - and gambling, of course.

When the desert cooled off a bit, they would head east into the Mojave to prospect along the Colorado River.

Wyatt Earp was the last surviving participant of the OK Corral shootout. Earp died at his home in Los Angeles, on January 13, 1929, at age 80.