In the spring or summer of 1900, Wyatt Earp was back in Seattle with his wife, Sadie, to catch SS Alliance and return to his saloon in Alaska. Seattle was again a wide-open town with saloons, gambling, fast women, sporting events on which to bet and the camaraderie of the sporting crowd. Rules were made to be broken in Seattle, and the tenderloin was the place to break them. Wyatt Earp, though, was only a transient character in the tenderloin’s history. He entered the Seattle gambling fraternity with passion, fortitude and resilience, and he slid out with nary a whisper.

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California resident Pam Potter is a descendant of Tom and Frank McLaury of Tombstone fame. Her primary sources were Seattle newspaper archives and city records; researcher Tom Gaumer assisted her. Suggested reading: Pioneer Square: Seattle’s Oldest Neighborhood (2005, Pioneer Square Community Association).

This article was written by Pam Potter and originally published in the October 2007 issue of Wild West Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

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