Josephine Sarah Marcus, b. 1861. "The Belle of the Honkytonks."

Top Five Ways She Made the West Wilder

1. Ran away from her home in New York at age 18 to join a burlesque troupe that led her to Tombstone, Arizona (there's more than one way to get cross-country.)

2. Married the infamous outlaw Wyatt Earp--whom she met while living with the Cochise County Sheriff. (It's so hard to resist the bad boys.)

3. The lady had clout: her affair with Earp is rumored to have triggered the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Those pesky cattle rustlers were a minor detail.

4. The Jane of all trades: she was a dancer, actress, gambler, and saloon-keeper. "Respectable" ladies dubbed her a prostitute, but she called it being "independent."

5. She knew the importance of mystery: she published a memoir called "I Married Wyatt Earp"--but ran into difficulty when the editors wanted her to tell the truth and come clean about her activities in Tombstone. Her solution? Burn the manuscript.