Do any records indicate Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok met?

Do any records indicate Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok met?

John McCaffer
Queen Creek, Arizona

Wild Bill Hickok biographer Joe Rosa clears up the story for us: “I believe that it was Stuart Lake who first suggested they did meet, in his fictional biography of Earp. I think he based the meeting on the story that Hickok put some shots from his pistol into a saloon sign one hundred yards away. But his date of 1871 in Market Square, in Kansas City [Missouri], does not make sense. Hickok did not appear in KC until late December of that year. In several books devoted to Earp, various family members have been quoted as stating that Wyatt saw Hickok, but none of them suggested that they were buddies. So my answer would be that there is no evidence that they ever met.”

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Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian. His latest book is Wyatt Earp: Showdown at Tombstone.  If you have a question, write:  Ask the Marshall, P.O. Box 8008, Cave Creek, AZ 85327 or e-mail him at  marshall.trimble@scottsdalecc.edu