The adventures of America’s frontier West were often unpredictable and memorable. Riding through that rough landscape of history and legend was lawman Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (1848–1929), born on this day in Monmouth, Illinois.

Earp’s reputation began to grow in Dodge City in 1876. As an assistant marshal and faro dealer at the famous Long Branch Saloon, he became friends with gamblers Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday.

Earp was 33 and looking for a fresh start in Tombstone, Arizona, when he and his brothers Virgil and Morgan, together with Doc Holliday, confronted Ike Clanton’s gang in the notorious gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

According to historian Joseph G. Rosa, the fight lasted only thirty seconds and seventeen shots were fired. “Fast is fine,” Earp once said of gunfighting, “but accuracy is everything.”

Before his death, Earp moved to Hollywood and became a technical advisor for western films. The Internet Movie Database notes that Earp has been portrayed more than two dozen times on film, by actors ranging from Hugh O’Brian on television to Kevin Costner (1994), Kurt Russell (1993), Jimmy Stewart (1964), and Burt Lancaster (1957).

Some historians claim Earp’s exploits were more “glorified fiction” than truth. Yet one fact remains remarkable. Through years of turbulent adventures, often marked by the absence of control, Wyatt Earp was never hit by a bullet.

“He was a hard man among hard men in a hard environment,” wrote author Walter Noble Burns. “What he did, he did. The record stands. But weighed in balance, he will not be found wanting. Judged by the circumstances of his career, the verdict in his case is clear — Wyatt Earp was a man.”