Following Wyatt's return to San Francisco, Josephine began using the name "Josephine Earp". Josephine was Earp's common-law wife for 46 years until his death. Wyatt and Josie remained in San Francisco for about nine months until early 1883, when they left for Silverton, Colorado where silver and gold mining were flourishing. It was the first of many mining camps and boomtowns in which they lived. However, he still owned a house in Tombstone with his former common-law wife Mattie, who had waited for him in Colton where his parents and Virgil were living. During the summer of 1882, she sent him a letter saying that she wanted a divorce. She had met a gambler from Arizona and he had asked her to marry him. Earp did not believe in divorce and therefore refused, but she ran away with the gambler anyway. The gambler abandoned her in Arizona, so she moved to Pinal City, Arizona where she resumed life as a prostitute. She struggled with addictions and committed suicide by opium poisoning on July 3, 1888 at age 37-38.