
Between Memorial day and Labor day we have a gunfights as often as we can, most every weekend and if you call ahead of time we can usually scare up some volunteers to put on a show most any day!
You may wonder why they are so predictable around here so I will tell you. We were having an awful time with all our gunfighters. Just imagine if you had Wesley Hardin, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp,Virgil Earp, Buffalo Bill, Ben Thompson, Wild Bill, Phill Coe, Billy the Kid and Doc Holiday all there at the same time! It was a nightmare! All those ego’s and reputations at stake! Guns were going off at all hours and without warning. This had to stop so we got together; we thought and thought. What can you do to someone who is already dead? Finally we came up with what proved to be a brilliant idea. We got the Gunfighters together and told them that we were all going to start telling some real bad lies on them if they didn’t straighten up. Since they were all dead they could not come back to defend themselves or clear their names. Naturally this shook them up, most of them have suffered so much from Hollywood already that this was a raw nerve. There is nothing the old westerners value more highly than their names. Of course this didn’t faze Wyatt Earp all he would suffer from was the truth, he wrote his own lies. Fortunately he was greatly out numbered and coward that he is he went along with them all-be-it unwillingly. So they readily agreed to our terms which were that they could only reenact their shoot outs, in the Gary Cooper manner, at high noon. We also gave them a few special days a year that they can have a several duels in the same day. Since then we have even went so far as to hire them out for special occasions with nothing going amiss. If they even act out, all we have to do is threaten to slander them and they straighten right up!
Now Then
All jokes aside we do have a historically accurate gunfights during the summer. They are open to the public and free of charge, though tips to the reenactors are appreciated as they have taken time out of their lives to preserve history for the rest of us. Each gunfight is painstakingly researched for accuracy. In some cases where it is unclear exactly what happened we will explain the conflicting evidence and tell why we picked the version we did. Before each gunfight we will give a short history lesson about the participants and the events leading up to the fight. This way no one is left in the dark as to what happened and why.