John Henry "Doc" Holliday arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, following news of gold having been found in the territory. He went to work there as a faro dealer in the Bella Union Saloon which was owned by Thomas Miller, a partner of John A. Babb for whom he'd been similarly employed in Denver.
The Bella Union in Cheyenne was located in what is now the parking lot for the Hacienda restaurant in Cheyenne, so the building is no longer there. The bar itself did not have a long presence in Cheyenne, as in the fall of 1876 the owner moved the institution to Deadwood, South Dakota, and Holliday went with it. It was following the regional gold rush.
Holliday was a dentist by trade, but he practiced only a year before heading West after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He briefly resumed dentistry after moving to Dallas, but only very briefly, having to give it up due to the disease, after which he turned to gambling for a livelihood. The sometimes illegal occupation was one that required carrying a sidearm.
Wyatt Earp wrote of Holliday:
I found him a loyal friend and good company. He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.
Bat Masterson, who did not like him, wrote:
While he never did anything to entitle him to a Statue in the Hall of Fame, Doc Holliday was nevertheless a most picturesque character on the western border in those days when the pistol instead of law determined issues.... Holliday had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a most dangerous man…. Physically, Doc Holliday was a weakling who could not have whipped a healthy fifteen-year-old boy in a go-as-you-please fistfight.
Holliday was a curious figure in various ways, and there have been various efforts to pin down his personality, probably not all successfully. A convert from Presbyterianism to Methodism, he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed and seems to have carried a torch for a cousin who became a nun, Sister Mary Melanie Holliday, with some accounts holding that in spite of his association with Big Nose Kate he pined for her his entire life.
He died in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 1887.
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