By Bradley G. Courtney

Prescott history buffs know that the legendary John Henry “Doc” Holliday lived in Prescott before moving on to Tombstone. Most, however, don’t realize that Doc actually spent two separate tenures in our mountain town, the first of which was during the winter of 1879-80.

Doc came to Prescott by way of Las Vegas, New Mexico. His friend, Wyatt Earp, had gotten the hell out of Dodge City, Kansas, because he’d heard from brother Virgil, constable of Prescott at the time, about a new boomtown in southern Arizona with an unwelcoming name, Tombstone. No one can say for certain why Doc decided to join the Earp party, because almost a year would pass after hearing of Tombstone from Wyatt before he finally joined him there.

Holliday, with his girlfriend/partner Kate, arrived in Prescott in early November 1879. The couple found lodging in town while Wyatt and his lady, Mattie, stayed with Virgil and Allie. Wyatt’s time in Prescott was short, indeed more like an “extended layover” than a stay. He and Virgil were anxious to get to Tombstone.

Doc, who was making the transition from dentist to full-time professional gambler, evidently thought that Prescott was more to his liking. It may have been his planned destination all along, as Whiskey Row was still the gambling center of Arizona Territory. Another possibility is that it was Kate who liked what she saw, and convinced Doc to stay at least for a while. Perhaps she was trying to keep Doc away from Wyatt, whom she didn’t like. It may’ve been the climate of the Central Arizona Highlands, considered by many to be one of the best in the world. Holliday suffered from tuberculosis. Prescott would become a major treatment destination for tuberculosis patients in the early 1900s, and surely Doc sensed that central Arizona was better for him than southern Arizona. 

Kate was never fond of the Tombstone idea. If we are to believe Kate (known for offering questionable stories), she and Doc argued frequently about Tombstone—which he apparently had reservations about as well—and Wyatt Earp. Eventually, Kate declared, they agreed to temporarily separate. She’d go to Globe, and she did. Doc would head to Tombstone, which he didn’t. Instead, he went back to Las Vegas, New Mexico, to settle some personal business.

There’s a legend that started with Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp’s biographer, who claimed that Earp told him that Doc went on a winning streak on Whiskey Row amounting to a staggering sum of $40,000. Today that figure would be worth over 1.2 million dollars.

Anton Mazzanovich, a famous history chronicler during the time that Lake’s Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal came out, wrote to the editor of the Prescott Evening Courier in 1932 asking if any old-timers had heard of such a thing. In Mazzanovich’s mind it was all “apple sauce, as all the faro games put together in Prescott at that time could not show that amount of money.” He went on to claim that the most money Doc ever saw was the $8000 his grandmother had left him after her death. That money actually came from his mother, who passed away when John Henry was a teenager.

Inexplicably, local legend whittled Doc’s winnings to $10,000, still a wildly high sum (over $300,000 today). It’s reasonable, however, to conclude he might’ve won a fair amount on the Row, as Doc was able to travel to New Mexico to pay off a debt related to a saloon he’d co-owned.

Next week, Doc returns to Prescott. Also, a new discovery regarding where Doc lived during his second stretch here.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.