Yes John, I did some checking. The Sierra Nevada batholith ( a great chunk of granite floating like a cork in the liquid rock mantle) stretches from the Reno area to just about Tehachapi. My Dad and his folks came over the Tehachapi Pass just ahead of the Dust Bowl by a couple of years. I grew up in Delano CA, just north of Bakersfield. That was Joaquin Marietta's territory. I now live where Black Bart operated!

As for mythology, it's really debatable and it largely depends on how one defines "myth". If you happen to agree with the definition that states that "a myth is an untrue story that reveals a truth." (Gary Kessler, ca 1975) then I have to disagree. A lot of the stories are true. I imagine that the shades of gray have been leached from them in the repeated telling but other stories were chronicled in the newspapers of the day and the facts are verifiable. What Hollywood does with them is anybody's guess. Some are so outlandish that they drive you to the history books. I would call the verifiable Westerns "True stories of mythic proportion."

I've been wanting to add my two cents about the Earp clan for some time now and here is as good as any. In my opinion Wyatt Earp was a dirty murderous dog no better than the bunch he took out. From time to time he would take on the aspect of being a lawman to provide color of authority to settle his own grievances in a permanent way. He thought nothing of lying in wait and shooting a man in the back. In one incident he buried himself in sand by the side of the road and after his target rode by he came up out of the sand and shot him in the back.

Elsewhere it has been said that it is the victor who writes the history and this is so true in Earp's case. John Behan, sheriff of Tombstone had a daunting task keeping the lid on the boomtown. The Earps were not a welcome addition to the mix, just another problem with which to deal. The OK Corral incident caused a local stir and Earp was tried for murder but there wasn't sufficient evidence to get a conviction. If I remember correctly it came down to something like "mutual combat". It has been some time since I studied this. But I do know that Sheriff Behan went on to serve his country honorably in WWI while Wyatt was off to Alaska or San Francisco. After Behan's death, Earp began to tell the story "his way" in several different versions. Hillary was not the first to have a convenient memory. Ah, maybe it's just a tempest in a tea cup but it galls me every time I see the whitewash job. There, 2 cents.