Henry McCarty was born in New York City in 1859, far from the West where he would eventually become famous as Billy the Kid. Although he is generally depicted as a ruthless killer, Billy only wanted to avenge the murder of his employer who treated him like a son. Only four of the men Billy shot actually died, and these may all be considered acts of self-defense or self-preservation. At the age of 21, Billy paid the ultimate price for his violent lifestyle when he was shot and killed by sheriff Pat Garrett in a pitch black room at Fort Sumner. Many years later, a man calling himself Brushy Bill Roberts claimed to be Billy the Kid. He claimed that Garrett had mistakenly killed a man by the name of Billy Barlow. These claims were never verified.

The Colt Peacemaker, a .45-caliber gun manufactured by Colt's Fire Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut, was produced for the first time in 1873 and has become known as "the gun that won the West". At the time, it sold for $17.00.

On May 29, 1899, Pearl Hart and a man named Joe Boot (probably an alias) stopped the Globe, Arizona stagecoach and relieved its passengers of all their money -- about $400. Feeling badly at leaving her victims penniless, Pearl decided to return a dollar to each of them -- "enough to eat on". The woman bandit became an overnight sensation, and after her arrest, crowds gathered at the courthouse to get her autograph. She claimed to have committed the robbery because she needed money for her ailing mother, and the sympathetic jury released her, but when she was picked up a few months later for carrying an illegal weapon, she was sent to Yuma Territorial Prison where she earned the distinction of not only being the first woman sent there, but also the first woman to become pregnant while in prison! As the only men who had been alone with her were the prison guards, a preacher, and the Governor of Arizona, Pearl was discretely pardoned and asked to leave the state.

It has been estimated that 90% of women living in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876 were prostitutes. It was difficult for a woman to make a living in the American West, especially if she did not have the protection of a father or husband, and many single women turned to prostitution as their only option. According to historical accounts, Charlie Utter's famous wagon train of prostitutes arrived in Deadwood in 1876 to find miners lined up along the street and cheering their arrival. The women were accompanied by two madams who had chosen the professional names Madam Dirty Em and Madam Mustachio. Prostitution proved to be a thriving industry in the male dominated town of Deadwood and continued almost without interruption until the State's Attorney's Office closed the last four brothels in 1980.

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a 30-second shootout between lawmen and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona. It is generally regarded as the most famous shootout in the history of the American Wild West.

In poker, aces and eights are known as the Dead Man's Hand. According to legend, this is the result of an incident that took place on August 2, 1876, when an alcoholic drifter named Jack McCall shot and killed Wild Bill Hickok while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota. When he was shot, Hickok was holding a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights. There is some disagreement as to the fifth card, but according to some first-hand accounts, it was a five or nine of diamonds.

Jesse James took great delight in his notoriety and once went so far as to write his own press release and hand it to the engineer of the train he was robbing before riding away with his men. This press release, entitled "A true account of this present affair", stated: "The most daring robbery on record. The southbound train on the Iron Mountain Railroad was stopped here this evening by five heavily armed men and robbed of ____ dollars... The robbers were all large men, none of them under six feet tall. They were masked, and started in a southerly direction after they had robbed the train, all mounted on fine-blooded horses. There is a hell of an excitement in this part of the country!"

Although best known as a fearless frontier lawman, Wyatt Earp had several run-ins with the law himself. He was arrested for horse theft in Van Buren, Arkansas on May 8, 1871. After jumping bail, he fled to Kansas where he hunted buffalo and married a local prostitute. He is usually depicted as the hero of the famous gunfight at the OK Coral, but according to quite a few sources, he and his brothers actually instigated the fight. Afterwards, Earp was arrested by sheriff John Behan for the murder of Billy Clanton and Tom & Frank McLaury. Fortunately for him, the judge who tried the case, Wells Spicer, was a relative and the Earps were found to have been justified in their actions.

In 1911, Elmer McCurdy robbed a passenger train he thought contained thousands of dollars, but the disappointed outlaw made off with just $46 and was shot by lawmen shortly thereafter. McCurdy's unclaimed corpse was then embalmed with an arsenic preparation and sold by the undertaker to a traveling carnival that exhibited it as a sideshow curiosity. For about 60 years, McCurdy's body was bought and sold by various haunted houses and wax museums for use as a prop or attraction. His corpse finally wound up at The Pike, an amusement park funhouse in a Long Beach, California. During filming there in 1976 for the television show The Six Million Dollar Man, a prop man moved what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a gallows. When the mannequin's arm broke off, a human bone and muscle tissue were visible. Subsequent testing by the Los Angeles coroner's office revealed the prop was actually McCurdy, and he was buried at the famous Boot Hill cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas, 66 years after his death.

Black Bart, a.k.a. Charles E. Boles, wore socks over his boots during his robberies so that he couldn't be tracked. He considered himself a gentleman outlaw and enjoyed taunting his victims by leaving little bits of poetry behind in empty strongboxes to confuse those that would pursue him. He was eventually arrested in 1883 after dropping a handkerchief with an identifying laundrymark at the sight of one of his stagecoach robberies. He was sentenced to San Quentin Prison for six years, but had his sentence shortened to four years for good behavior. A short time after his release, he disappeared and was never heard from again.