Tucson Daily Citizen from Tucson, Arizona • Page 27

THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1966 A I I I --Citizen Photos By Dan Tortorell Museum Honors Frontier Marshal The story of Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, his life and his will open Sunday at Tombstone. In the background is times, will be displayed in this new museum which the old Cochise County Courthouse. HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? Faster, healthier if you follow Saturday garden tips in the CITIZEN WYATT EARP MUSEUM Opening Set Sunday By MARGARET KUEHLTHAU Citizen Staff Writer TOMBSTONE. Wyatt Earp has returned to Toughnut Street. On Sunday, a new museum housing the incomparable Wyatt Earp collection, owned by John D.

Gilchriese, will be opened to the public. And for the first time in history, the public will learn the truth about the intrepid adventurer who became a symbol of the great 19th Century West. In his lifetime, Wyatt Earp was a gambler, bartender, lawman, railroader and prospector --always on the side of law and order. Few people gre aware of the fact he counted among his i President Herbert Hoover, William a Hearst and other illustrious men of history. At the museum, myths and legends are replaced by illuminating fact.

The true story is backed up by documents, photographs, guns, badges, newspaper clippings and diaries. Also included in the collection, amassed over a 20-year period, are letters and mining claims, all authentic and all original, dating back to the 1800s. Beginning with the early days of Wyatt Earp, who once served as deputy sheriff of Pima County (when Tombstone was included within its borders), a panorama The visitor is taken from the Midwest of the 19th Century to Alaska and back again to California, -where Earp died in 1929. Collectively, the display tells the story of the Earp brothers, their lives and their times. In his personal collection, Gilchriese, who is field historian for the University of Arizona, has more than 500 of Earp's personal letters and 1,000 other items related to the frontier marshal.

The display will change from time to time, rev a 1 i new adventures in Earp's long, exciting career. Gov. Sam Goddard and 100 other Tucsonians will attend a private and official opening of the museum at 2 p.m. Saturday when a 2 by 6-foot painting by Don Perceval will be unveiled. Perceval, internationally known western artist who now resides in Santa Barbara, formerly lived in Tucson.

His picture will be the first authentic painting of that brief moment in history when the gunmen moved down the boardwalk toward western immortality. Produced according to scale, after a year of consultation and study, the painting will be a bird's eye view of the street fight when the McLaurys and Clantons faced the Earps and Doc Holiday on Oct. 26, 1881. "Truth is greater than fiction any day of the year, and documented material in this mu- seum will refute the myth of the O.K. Corral," Gilchriese said.

"Through the years, the truth about the Earps as about the gunfight has been twisted and distorted. Never, in any of his writings on his conversations in later life, did Wyatt Earp ever refer to the fight in any way except as a 'street Wyatt Earp's own hand-drawn maps of the street fight, with other documentation, will be on display to prove that the most celebrated gunfight of all time did not happen in the O.K. Corral. Also on display will be the only photograph in existence of the original O.K. Corral.

Curator for the museum will be Harry Stewart, formerly of Tucson and a one-time western bookstore proprietor in Idaho. He, too, is a collector and researcher of western lore. Special guests at Saturday's private opening of the museum will i two 90-year-old guests from California who knew Wyatt Earp. They are Mrs. Rose Macho- mich of Laguna Hills, a sister of William Haddock who was editor of the Tombstone Epitaph 1895 and 1913, a Tom Meehan of Hawthorne.

Meehan was a stableboy in the 1890s when Earp was racing thoroughbreds in San Francisco. Gilchriese said admission to Museum Officials John D. Gilchriese (right) will witness the culmination of a 20-year dream Sunday when the Wyatt Earp Museum opens to the public. Here he points out an Edward L. Doheny check to Harqr Stewart, the museum's curator.

Doheny, who became a multimillionaire, got his start as a dishwasher in Tucson's old Cosmopolitan Hotel. the museum, open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of the week, will be 50 cents for adults, with children under 12 admitted free. "In all humility, I believe that this will be an exciting museum --as only truth can be interesting," Gilchriese said.

"We are not here to make a profit on completely unrelated junk lika Japanese produced bric-a-brac, cartoon postcards or cactus candy. "We are not going to sell World War I souvenirs or so- called early American reproductions. "This will be an authentic museum dedicated to the truth." SMART MOTHERS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS SPECIAL SALE OFFER NOW1 NO LOWER PRICES WILL BE OFFERED LATER! Missy Fashions are the eut- esf-ever, in our huge new collection of latest a styles. At lowest prices ever for this quality, you'll choose her most exciting wardrobe to include newest shifts, empires and drop- waists in versatile dark- tone prints. Sizes 7-14 only.

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