Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, a friend of the Cowboys, later testified that he told the Cowboys they must give up their arms. Ike Clanton said he was not armed, and Tom McLaury pulled his coat open to show he was not carrying a weapon, but Frank insisted that he would give up his guns only after City Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers were first disarmed.

Despite its name, the gunfight did not take place within or next to the O.K. Corral, which fronted Allen Street and had a rear entrance lined with horse stalls on Fremont Street. The shootout actually took place in a narrow lot on the side of C. S. Fly's Photographic Studio on Fremont Street, six doors west of the O.K. Corral's rear entrance.

Who started shooting first is not certain. Accounts by both participants and eyewitnesses are contradictory, and the smoke from the black powder used in the weapons added to the confusion of the gunfight in the narrow space.

The 30-second shootout took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona. Approximately 30 shots were fired, leaving outlaws Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton dead.

Ike Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and Wes Fuller ran from the fight.

Virgil, Morgan, and Holliday were wounded, but Wyatt was unharmed.

Four days after the shootout, Ike Clanton filed murder charges against Doc Holliday and the Earps. Wyatt and Holliday were arrested and brought before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer. Morgan and Virgil were still recovering at home. After a 30-day preliminary hearing and a brief stint in jail, the lawmen were shown to have acted within the law.

The outlaws killed in the O.K. Corral shootout are among those buried in Tombstone's Boothill Graveyard, so named because most of those buried there "died with their boots on."

It was not well known to the American public until 1931 (fifty years after the shootout) when Stuart Lake published the best-selling biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal two years after Earp's death. The book was the basis for the 1946 film My Darling Clementine, directed by John Ford, and the 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, after which the shootout became known by that name.