Founders’ Day returns after hiatus

PAGE 2 WEEKLY REGISTER-CALL • February 6, 2025

Four-star outlaws visiting Gilpin

Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday,

the Masterson brothers (mostly

Bat) and many more gamblers,

gunfighters and western law-

men weave in and out of Gil-

pin’s history. One of my readers

says she is confused.

Sometimes locally published

monographs tell unusual tales

about our famous ancestors.

Colorado author Jennifer

Adamson is an example. When

it comes to Wyatt Earp and the

famous gamblers he hung out

with, she is a good one to read

because she is a shirt-tail rela-

tive of the Earps.

Wyatt Earp was a well-known

lawman who survived the

famous shootout in 1881 at the

OK Corral. Wyatt’s life intersects

with Doc Holliday and various

members of the Dodge City gang

and the James Gang. Those in-

terwoven families always teased

the mind of Adamson. What

were the connections? Wyatt

Earp and Doc Holliday were

best friends, but how does that

fit in? How does Colorado fit in?

A reader just challenged me to

straighten it all out.

That brings us right to the

newspaper columns of Perry

Mallen. So far as The Rocky

Mountain News was con-

cerned, Mallen was the expert.

Even though many of his facts

about Doc Holliday were blown

apart, he kept writing. Many

tales about him, particularly his

hot temper, came from Mallen.

Who, if we believe Mallen, was

involved in a gunfight nearly ev-

ery night. In his view, Holliday

was misunderstood and was

actually on the side of law and

order. Colorado historians like

Richard Churchill doubt most

of what Mallen said and wrote.

On the other hand, it is hard to

see Doc Holliday as a good guy.

The Pueblo Chieftain stayed

firmly on Mallen’s negative

view of Doc. The Rocky Moun-

tain News saw Mallen as a

conman prevaricator. Bat Mas-

terson and Doc Holliday were

friends, but Wyatt Earp stayed

friends with both. While I’d like

to “just straighten this out,”

it’s not easy. Masterson stayed

loyal to his friends even when

he did not like them.

Stuart Lake, a reporter at

the time, said Holliday had few

real friends. He described him

as having “a perverse nature.”

The Chieftain called Mallen

“a reward-seeking impostor.”

He showed no signs of giving

back money he collected to aid

Holliday.

Things were made even

muddier by the whole affair to

do with extraditing Doc from

Arizona to be tried in Colorado.

This was a comic opera. At one

point, it featured Colorado Gov.

Frederick Walker Pitkin declar-

ing that his own writ was poorly

drawn.

The 1840s and 50s were

hectic times for gamblers and

lawmen. Take a look at the life

of Doc Holliday from 1871 to

1878. He apparently ran a suc-

cessful dental office in Central

City and two other towns. But

at the same time, he was part of

many dramas. Above all, he was

a newspaper columnist.

When the Royal Gorge

Railroad war broke out, Hol-

liday was one of the 33 tough

gang leaders recruited to fight

on the Atchison, Topeka and

Santa Fe Railway railroad side

against our local Denver and

Rio Grande Railroad. The Rio

Grande guys were lightly armed

(some said they were given no

ammunition), but the tough

guys Holliday recruited were

mostly the real thing. Just the

names of those outlaws are fun.

There was Dirty Dave, Doc’s

girlfriend Katie, various mem-

bers of the HooDoo Gang, JJ

Webb and probably “Johnnie

Holliday advertised for dental

clients in 1878. Clients from

places like Gilpin were encour

aged to check out his work. He

apparently would go anywhere

(eventually, if not promptly) to

work on teeth. People must not

have been that particular about

his background, either. During

this period, Holliday stayed

friends with Poker Annie. There

was one tough woman always

toting her big cigar. When he

a bit.

up and left town that

night. They rode 400

miles to a new resi-

seemed forgotten.

continued working with Jeweler

Billy Leonard. They cut and

polished some fine gems and

gold work. The relationships

between the lawmen and the

bad men were strange during

this time. That same year Wyatt

was nearly ambushed by some

bad guys. Only Doc Holiday,

with his quick gun, looked in

time to shoot the ambushers

and saved Earp. Doc Holiday

and Wyatt Earp just seemed to

be friends no matter what.

Peaceful intentions or not,

1881 was the year of the fabled

gunfight at the OK Corral.

Details about that Oct. 26

afternoon are muddy too. On

that afternoon City Marshall

Virgil Earp and his brothers

Wyatt and Morgan confronted

the Clanton gang. When the

gun smoke settled, three of the

Clanton cowboys were dead,

and two of the Earps were

wounded. Let’s hope Jennifer

finds out more for her next

Earp book and writes more:

hardly a peaceful picture, but

an interesting one.

This was all read about

initially from the pen of writers

like Bat Masterson. He was a

participant observer as it all un-

folded. He was mainly a sports-

writer for New York papers and

wrote about the old west. He

loved being a newspaperman

and died at his desk in 1929.

While Gilpin’s history was

never centered on the old west

gangsters, it was there. Let’s

hope the Weekly Register Call

is around for a long time to tell

those tales. Doc Holliday, Bat

Masterson and Wyatt Earp:

three superstars of the late 19th

and early 20th centuries were

here. We’ll hear more about

them and get a better under-

standing.

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Fact-checking on The Wild West

It seems like time travels too fast, and we’re now rac-

ing through February. I have had to catch up after sev-

eral months of rehab, and I’m making progress. WR-C

managing editor Becky Osterwald had to fill in for me

at the annual County Commissioner’s meeting as they

once again embraced the Boulder County newspaper in

early January.

Reading Don Ireland’s professional coverage of the

meeting, I had to chuckle slightly over newly sworn-in

Commissioner Jeff Aikins’s comment about improv-

ing our “fact-checking” regarding a Forrest Whitman

column written several years ago. Whitman was a past

Gilpin County commissioner and quite a historian. Ai-

kin questioned our “fact-checking” as a possible reason

to join his colleagues in the 3-0 vote to violate state

statutes again. I would guess that Jeff knows consider-

able history of Central City.

People seeking to be elected to public office should

start with local government, such as the city council

and local school boards. Jeff diligently served on the

Central City Council for eight years and even ran for

mayor against Jeremy Fey. WR-C, however, endorsed

Fey. The election was relatively close.

I had one opportunity to visit with Jeff as we sat

together at an Elks Club function one evening. He told

me some of his life experiences, and I liked him. I still

do. I also respect hard work and community service

in which Jeff excels. During the past several years, I

have seen Jeff often when I visit Easy Street for some

great food. Other times over at The Bonanza, where

he was always working. I understand that he has now

retired from his old job and will be missed. When he

came out for county commissioner, I thought he would

be a strong candidate. Fey, who ran as an unaffiliated

candidate, still had two years left as mayor and was en-

tangled in the Eric Langan sexually oriented business

saga. I thought Fey should conclude his mayorship

before seeking a higher office with a better pay grade.

A three-way race can have strange results. I’m not

sure who was the victim in the three-way race, but I

suspect it was incumbent Commissioner Marie Mornis.

I’ve participated in local elections for over 50 years,

and in the old days, we never allowed elected officials

to be political party officers. In other words, party

workers were “Kingmakers” but never “Kings.”

Last year, Gilpin GOP’s ugly rift began when party

treasurer Jessica Kays walked out of the public debate

because she felt she had not been treated fairly in the

debate planning. I was there and was very sorry to see

her leave the meeting.

I’m sure that Marie lost some votes because of occu-

pying two political positions, but that was last year.

I Googled Doc Holiday to see if Forrest had his facts

right in a column from 2023. It appears that Holliday

spent a great deal of time in Colorado gambling and

fighting in mining towns. Whitman’s story has more

information about Holliday than Google has online.

Holliday eventually died of tuberculosis in Glenwood

Springs in 1887.

Forrest’s column could not be “fact-checked” because

we were not alive at the time. Perhaps Jeff knows more

and can share his history of Main Street with our read-

ers.

There’s a very old newspaper slogan, “We print our

mistakes, and doctors bury theirs.”

Here is Forrest Whitman’s column on the wild, wild

West from February 2023 …

watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, who doesn’t talk much about

the press or Freedom of the Press. But journalists tell the truth to the

“best of our ability at the time,” as Carl Bernstein says.

In her first block, Maddow discussed authoritarianism and how

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consolidated power—including

eliminating transparency in government by the press.

What blew me away was when she compared Erdoğan has consoli-

dated power to a right-wing elected county executive in Long Island,

N.Y., who “yanked all the public notice from Newsday and started

putting them in a right-wing paper that isn’t in Long Island.”

So, he moved the city’s legal notices away from the only newspaper

in Long Island because of … what else … politics.

Hmm … does that sound familiar, Gilpin County?

Founders’ Day returns after hiatus

Patrick Henry Sweeney

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Founders’ Day returns after hiatus

PAGE 2 WEEKLY REGISTER-CALL • February 6, 2025

Four-star outlaws visiting Gilpin

Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday,

Bat) and many more gamblers,

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