22 Thursday, March 20, 1997 Pahnunp Valley Gmtte
Sun Valley, CA
Gazette on the s! r eet...
How do you feel about the proposed
expansion of Fort Irwin?
Lancaster, PA Santa Clarita, CA Esalon, CA
Fremont, CA
:- Housewife -
Y
areelosing so many bases we need
to have enough bases for
emergency training. If it's cheaper
to opea, ate one large base. I would
be in favor of it."
RICK HAEFNER-- Geologist
-- "I don't like it. I don't think they
need the additional space. I don't
understand why they keep with-
drawing public land from the
public. There won't be any public
land left for the public."
[AN BOULTON - Retired
office Worker -- "I don't know
much about it. I wouldn't be afraid
to drive through a base--- Imight
be safer there."
"Why don't they use tle
land."
doesn't make
any difference to nae;
Compiled by staff photographers
i
482-301 6 No to Abuse 751 - 111 8
Tonopah 24 Hr. Crisis Line Pahrump
II I II I I Ill
Although Wyatt and Virgil Earp are best
remembered for their association with
Tombstone, Arizona and the shoot-out at the
OK Coral, both spent time in Nevada and
Virgil died of pneumonia in Goldfield in
1905.
Wyatt spent a few days in Carson
City in March 1897 at the time of the
Corbett-Fitzsimmons heavyweight
championship fight. Later, in 1902, he and
his wife returned to the state, settling in
Tonopah where he ran the Northern Saloon,
worked as a freighter and was employed as
a guard by the Tonopah Mining Company.
He also served a brief term as a Deputy US
Marshal for the Ninth Circuit Court. In
August 1902, they moved to California.
Over the next several years, they prospected
and lived briefly in several Nevada camps
and Wyatt had mining interest in the
Bullfrog District in 1905.
Sometime in the fall of 1904, Virgil and his
wife, Allie, showed up in Goldfield. For a
time, he served as a Deputy Sheriff for
Esmeralda,County. He also worked as a
special officer at the National Club and had
several mining claims in Bullfrog. In the
fall of 1905, he fell ill with pneumonia and
died at the Miners' Union Hospital on
October I9.
Over the years, many Nevadans have come
to believe that Virgil Earp is buried in
Goldfield. Not so. He is buried in Riverview
Cemetery, Portland, Oregon, and the home of a
daughter, Nellie Jane Earp Law. Nellie was born
Ne.va,100- then ananow
THE SAGA OF VIRGIL EARP
by Phillip 1. Earl
Nevada Historical Society
at Pella, Iowa on January 7, 1862. Virgil was away
in the Civil War at that time and his wife, Ellen,
was informed that he had been killed in action.
Believing herself to be a widow, she and Nellie
moved to Oregon in 1864, where she remarried.
Virgil had meanwhile returned from the war.
Learning that Ellen had left, he decided to leave
matters as they were and get on with his own life.
In 1872, he married Alvia "Allie" Sullivan and
the two remained together until his death
some thirty years later. Nellie Jane married
Levi Law in January 1880, becoming the
mother of two daughters and a son. Ellen had
talked to Nellie about her father from time to
time as the girl was growing up and Nellie
traced him to Prescott, Arizona in 1898 and
began a correspondence. In April 1899, Nellie
came down with a serious case of pneumonia
and Virgil and Allie came to Portland to be at
her bedside. The reunion with Nellie and her
children and with Ellen was a happy one and
Nellie and Virgil continued their
correspondence.
Ellen died two years later and Allie wired
Nellie of her father's death in 1905. Nellie
asked her son-in-law, Alex Bernard, to go to
Goldfield and accompany Virgil's remains to
Portland. The family had a plot at Riverview
and it was there that Virgil Earp was laid to
rest.
In 1975, this writer had occasion to be in
Portland. On the second afternoon in town, I
visited Virgil Earp's grave and had a few long
thoughts on all the violence that he had seen
in the course of his long life and the strange
twist of fate by which he ended up far from
Tombstone, the Nevada boomcamp of
Goldfield and all the other memorable places
he had once called home.
Virgil Earp, died in Goldfield, Nevada,
buried in Portland, Oregon.
I II
