CRESTVIEW — One of the Wild West’s most legendary figures had a fleeting North Okaloosa County association.
Dr. John Henry “Doc” Holliday — famous for his role in the Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona — returned to his native Georgia after graduating from dental school in Philadelphia.
He worked his way south to Florida, then headed west, according to Holliday historian Victoria Wilcox.
“We think he came right through Okaloosa County,” which would have been Walton County in the 1870s when Holliday passed through en route to Dallas, she said.
Wilcox, who attended Crestview dentist Dr. Richard Thomas’s annual Doc Holliday birthday party on Friday, marveled at the exhibit Thomas created in his Alabama Street practice.
It includes dental tools typical of the late 19th century, playing cards for Faro — “They always show them playing poker in the movies but actually it was Faro,” Thomas said — and Holliday’s appointment “book,” an ivory fan with one blade per day of the week on which appointments were penciled in. The book includes traces of Holliday’s handwriting.
The centerpiece is Doc Holliday’s dentist’s chair and foot-powered pedal drill, which Thomas won in an online auction in 2013, bidding against the Doc Holliday Museum in the legend’s hometown of Griffin, Georgia.
“It is world-class,” Wilcox said. “There is nothing nowhere that has what Dr. Thomas has here. This is amazing. I’m excited for Crestview.”
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Doc Holliday expert 'excited' by Crestview exhibit