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The Lawmen and Outlaws Who Built the Old West

Khalid Elhassan August 29, 2021 35 min

12. The Other Old West Outlaw Who Got on Wyatt Earp’s Wrong Side

Old West outlaw John Peters Ringo (1850 – 1882), better known as Johnny Ringo, was born in Indiana, and his family moved to Missouri in 1856. When Ringo was fourteen, the family upped stakes and moved to California, but en route in Wyoming, his father inadvertently killed himself when he stepped off a wagon with a loaded shotgun that was accidentally discharged. The buckshot entered through the right side of his face, and blew out the top of his head as it exited.

Ringo Sr. was buried in Wyoming, and the family continued on to California, where Johnny Ringo lived until the 1870s. He eventually moved to Mason County, Texas, and became involved in a spate of vigilante lawlessness known as the “Mason County War“. Next, he became associated with the Cochise County Cowboys, an outlaw group in Tombstone, Arizona, and of the corrupt Tombstone Sheriff’s office. He is best known for his hostility to and adverse run-ins with lawman Wyatt Earp and his associates, which eventually spelled Ringo’s doom.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.