Cochise County in the Old West Cochise County feud or the Earp–Clanton feud, which included the historic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the town of Tombstone and Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride in the early 1880s. Dr. George E. Goodfellow famously described Tombstone, the capital of Cochise County, as the "condensation of wickedness." The land that now comprises Cochise County, along with the rest of modern Arizona south of the Gila River and a small part of southwestern New Mexico, was Mexican territory until 1853, when it was purchased by the United States in the Gadsden Purchase. Cochise County was created on February 1, 1881 from
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was part of the Works Progress Administration. According to one report, Hayhurst was a friend of the Behan family. After he completed his transcription, he kept the original document in his home, where it was destroyed in a house fire. The interpersonal conflicts and feuds leading to the gunfight were complex. Each side had strong family ties. The brothers James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren Earp were a tight-knit family, working together as pimps, lawmen, and saloon owners in several frontier towns, among other occupations, and had moved together from one town to another. Virgil served in the Union Army