DEADWOOD, S.D. -- We rode into this legendary town in the
But nary was heard a discouraging word in 21st-century Deadwood, where nearly every storefront harbors a small casino, where parking meters stand in place of hitching posts, where the only precious metals being mined rattle into slot machine trays, and where hordes of tourists have replaced the often brutal denizens of 130 years ago who swore, drank, gambled, and killed when they weren't crowding into the brothels in town.
Today's Deadwood is an unrecognizable version of what historians agree was a particularly rowdy outpost during the country's westward expansion. Designated a National Historic District, it's now a county seat (pop. 1,540) that attracts 5 million to 6 million visitors annually. Still, enough of the past remains to stir the imagination as you walk through the town or its cemetery high on a hill, where Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane lie nearly side by side. What must it have been like to be here in the 1870s?
There were no North and South Dakotas then, only a vast Dakota Territory (now part of four states) where animals roamed and Native Americans saw their lands taken from them in a rush by outsiders to find gold no matter what the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie may have promised (it promised to give the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux) and despite the efforts of the Army, in the beginning at least, to keep the treasure-seeking trespassers out.
The setting for this purely American story that pitted avarice and manifest destiny against the Native American population is all there in the town itself -- set in a canyon almost a mile above sea level -- and in the surrounding hills where the miners staked their claims.
In some ways, a visit to Deadwood is a disturbing journey into the past, something the TV series has captured with far more authenticity than the reality of the tourist mecca it has become. While the reminders of what actually occurred here keep the past alive, the visitor needs to be aware that legend and reality do not always match up perfectly.
My wife, Harriet, and I drove to Deadwood from Rapid City, about 40 miles away, and began our visit with a stop at the History and Information Center (a restored railroad station), where we picked up a map and other material. We also stopped to look at framed photographs of old Deadwood, confirmation that a gritty mining camp, soon to evolve into a gritty town, did indeed exist a decade after the end of the Civil War.