The World of Doc Holliday: History and Historic Images

John Henry “Doc” Holliday—his name conjures images of the Wild West, of gunfights and gambling halls, of a friendship with Wyatt Earp and the famous silver camp of Tombstone. But Doc Holliday’s story is much richer than what those highlights reveal. He was a modern Victorian man, well-educated and well-trained for a professional career, a man whose life seemed destined to be lived in the cities of nineteenth-century America, cities connected by thousands of miles of rail. If his circumstances hadn’t taken a surprising change, sending him West into legend as Doc Holliday, he likely never would have taken part in a posse ride across a Western desert, or taken a stagecoach trip across a precipitous Rocky Mountain pass. But even in the West, Doc made most of his journeys by rail—from Georgia to Texas, from Dodge City to Las Vegas, across Arizona, and from New Mexico to Colorado and Montana. For Tombstone, after all, was only a short eighteen months of his legendary life, and there was so much more to Doc Holliday than a gunfight near the O.K. Corral. Revealed from contemporary newspaper accounts and records of interviews with Doc himself and the people who knew him, The World of Doc Holliday offers a true first-hand accounting of his adventure-filled life.

Victoria Wilcox is Founding Director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum (home of the family of Doc Holliday) and an expert on the life of the Western legend. She authored the award-winning historical novel trilogy, Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday, the documentary film In Search of Doc Holliday, has lectured across the country, guested on NPR affiliates, and was featured in the TV series Legends & Lies: The Real West.