See also the people and places of Deadwood.
Despite the feeble attempts of the government to enforce the provisions of its treaty with the Lakota and keep whites from entering the Black Hills, settlers by the hundreds stormed the Paha Sapa (Lakota for Black Hills). In their steep, pine covered canyons and lush green meadows, placer miners began building sluices and shacks, gambling for gold against defensive Indian attack and an army of scolding. Deadwood, known as one of the wildest and the wickedest mining camps in the American West, sprang to life after Custer's 1875 confirmation of gold.
In the spring of 1876, seven months after the news of gold was out, the population of the narrow gulch swelled from a few ramshackle huts to more than 7,000 miners, muleskinners, madams, outlaws and con artists.
Among them was Wild Bill (James Butler) Hickok, his “pard” Colorado Charley Utter, Calamity Jane (Martha Canary Burke) and a host of other Old West Legends and characters. Wild Bill hoped to relieve the recently wealthy miners of some of their gold at the poker tables. Because Wild Bill had a reputation as a gunman and marshall, Deadwood folk thought he might be the one to “bring some semblance of order to the lawless element of the camp” as a local newspaper stated at the time. But fate would have it otherwise.
Wild Bill Hickok
PHOTO COURTESY ADAMS MUSEUM, DEADWOOD
On August 2, 1876 Wild Bill Hickok’s luck ran out and as he had predicted, he was shot dead while playing poker in the #10 Saloon. He is buried at Mt. Moriah Cemetery next to his contemporaries of the Wild West days of Deadwood.
Deadwood Main Street 1876.
PHOTO COURTESY ADAMS MUSEUM, DEADWOOD
Other Old West legends and courageous pioneers remained to build Deadwood into a thriving community that sported a prosperous business district and more than twenty-two “saloons” and “theaters”, almost all of which were not fit for a respectable lady. Not many of the prospectors went back east rich men, but the gold rush spawned a crop of shrewd businessmen who made swift decisions and smart investments that made them millionaires in a time when a million dollars was a fortune.
In 1876 Deadwood’s Main Street was a sea of muddy wagon ruts and piles of rough hewn lumber waiting to be stacked into freshly built hotels, stores and saloons. The air was sweet with the smell of fresh-cut pine. The steep sides of the narrow gulch were quickly becoming bare as the trees were cut for building materials. The creek flowing within a few yards of the newly formed street was crowded with miners working sluices and prospectors panning for gold.
Miners and prospectors crowd City Creek searching for gold in 1876.
PHOTO COURTESY ADAMS MUSEUM, DEADWOOD
The echos of hammering and sawing against the canyon walls was almost drowned out by the shouts of men as they worked, drank, gambled and caroused. It was a rough and lawless place inhabited by a host of dirty and greedy men, and a few women, all oblivious to the virgin beauty of the Black Hills surrounding them.
The quick influx of humanity led to the building of a city virtually overnight. Stores of choice were selling hardware, mining supplies, groceries and liquor and the proprietors would become wealthy men almost overnight. Several banks opened, some doing over $100,000 a day in business, remarkable for a bank in so small a city.
Deadwood Main Street 1876
PHOTO COURTESY ADAMS MUSEUM, DEADWOOD
Two fires and a flash flood almost obliterated the town over the next ten years. But the citizens of Deadwood were made of tougher stuff and they rebuilt the city each time Mother Nature railed against it. Deadwood flourished for many years, first as a wild and woolly sanctuary for the roughest of characters, then as a hard-working city that played just as hard when the day was done. But as the miners moved on up the road a couple of miles to Lead where they began to carve tunnels in the hard rock bearing gold, Deadwood lost its luster and after a hundred years of properity, businesses began to close and windows were boarded up. Tourists still came during the summer months to visit Wild Bill and buy ice cream, but the lawmen got tougher closing the ill-legal gambling houses and brothels, the activities that had made Deadwood a thriving community for years after the gold was gone.
In 1988, after a particularly devastating fire that brought down the Syndicate Block, a beautiful Victorian lady on Main Street, a group of citizens gathered and fought together to restore a part of Deadwood’s past by legalizing limited stakes gambling again so that they could rebuild the town and install the protection that the failing National Historic Landmark deserved. The people of South Dakota voted to allow it in Deadwood with the stipulation that the majority of the proceeds be spent to restore the Old West town. And so in November 1989 a shot rang out on Main Street signaling the beginning of a new era in Deadwood Gulch.
With nearly 15 years of restoration work accomplished, Deadwood is taking on its former luster. Most of the buildings on Main Street have been renovated and restored, inside and out. The streets are paved with bricks again and replicas of early street lamps adorn the sidewalks where legends larger than life once walked. Historic buildings are protected by preservation laws and future historic restoration projects are under scrutiny as the entire City of Deadwood has taken its rightful place as a National Historic Landmark.
Today, Deadwood proudly welcomes visitors as a National Historic Landmark.
PHOTO COURTESY DEADWOOD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Fire of 1879
On September 25, 1879 the great Deadwood fire broke out. Although the citizens of Deadwood thought they had protected themselves from just this kind of disaster, the unthinkable happened. The fire broke out in Mrs. Ellsner’s Empire Bakery and quickly spread when eight kegs of gunpowder blew up in a nearby hardware store. At once the fire was spread all over the town. Three hundred buildings were destroyed in an area of only one-half by one-quarter of a mile. Two-thousand people were left homeless and the total loss of property was estimated at $3 million.
Everyone pitched in to immediately begin rebuilding the town. Bank vaults were found to generally have protected their contents and gold dust was sifted from the ashes to pay for new buildings and equipment. Supplies that were carted by horse and wagon for weeks to reach the gulch had to be replenished.
Within six months a new town was springing from the ashes. Hence today when you walk Main Street, you will see that most of the wood buildings have disappeared and are replaced with solid Victorian architecture of brick and stone.