For all those complaining this is a bit touristy, of course it is! That's all Deadwood is. A place for gambling tourists! I love visiting here, have been twice, and always find something interesting. We stopped in to take a look at Saloon No. 10.
The most important event in Deadwood history was a poker game in Saloon #10 on August 2, 1876, where the sniveling coward Jack McCall snuck up and shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head. Hickok had arrived in Deadwood only a few weeks earlier, played a succession of card games, and never in his life sat with his back to the door. Until that day.
The events of that day are restaged every night during the summer (except Sundays) in the Trial of Jack McCall. The show is free, and starts with a live gunfight on Main Street at 7:30 pm, then moves into the Masonic Temple for the trial.
Now, where Old Saloon No. 10 is with a sign saying this is where Hickok was killed is NOT where Saloon No. 10 is where you can go in and see the infamous death chair (that one of the performers says isn't even real) but they are close together. Everything is close in Deadwood. The relocated saloon has a lot of memorabilia and of course, gambling opportunities.
The settlement of Deadwood began in the 1870s and has been described as illegal, since it lay within the territory granted to Native Americans in the 1868 Treaty of Laramie. The treaty had guaranteed ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota people, and disputes over the Hills are ongoing, having reached the United States Supreme Court on several occasions.
However, in 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Hills and announced the discovery of gold on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota. Custer's announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and gave rise to the lawless town of Deadwood, which quickly reached a population of around 5,000.
Real places and things in Deadwood are hard to come by, since most of the town was leveled in the great fire of 1879, or the medium fire of 1894, and 1948, and 1951, and 1954. And whatever was left may have gone up in the great fire of 1987. The gulch's abundance of dry, fallen timber blessed the town with a name and cursed it with a wicked combustibility....
In Deadwood, you can't park along the street, that annoys me! Parking sucks. But it's a neat little town, with a lot of history and a place to just be a cowboy at heart, gamble, drink beer, eat game and well, whatever you wanna do! read more