Wild West Lawman cache Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp was born March 19, 1848. One of the icons of the American West, he worked for the law and helped tame the wild cowboy culture that pervaded the frontier. In Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt got into a feud with a local rancher that resulted in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, perhaps the most famous gunfight in American history. Earp died in Los Angeles on January 13, 1929.