The most famous resident of Deadwood, Dakota Territory (South Dakota)
In 1868, the U.S. government gave the Lakota Sioux ownership of the Dakota Black Hills by signing the Fort Laramie Treaty. About five years later, there was a financial recession back east and some thought what was needed was an infusion of gold. (That's it. Add more money, don't look back to see what caused the problem in the first place and modify behavior, thereby preventing future recessions. Will we ever learn??)
The next year, 1874, General George Armstrong Custer leads the 7th Cavalry into the Black Hills ostensibly to look for a good place to build a fort. He just happened to have two experienced gold miners with him. (What are the odds of that "just happening?") Lo and behold, they discover gold at French Creek, near today's Custer, South Dakota.
A year later, in the northern Black Hills, an even richer deposit is found, and the stampede to Deadwood Gulch is on!
Just a year later, according to Deadwood's website, "Colorado Charlie Utter and his brother Steve organize a wagon train from George, Colorado to the gold fields of Deadwood and the Black Hills. The wagons pass through Cheyenne, Wyoming picking up over 100 passengers. Among them are: Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Madam Mustache, Dirty Em and "working” girls. The wagon train arrives around July 12, 1876." Just three weeks later, Wild Bill Hickok is dead, shot in the back of the head, holding what has become known in poker as a Dead Man's Hand: aces and eights. Amazing that he would be eternally linked to a town he only spent three weeks in!
Hickok is buried in Mount Moriah cemetery. It's a cold, slippery walk through there to pay homage to the past, but it's obvious lots of folks do it - even in February's chilly weather.
Over the next few weeks, Calamity Jane spread the rumor that she and Hickok had been lovers. That's doubtful since Hickok had a new wife, Agnes, back in Cincinnati to whom he wrote letters after arriving in Deadwood. Regardless, Calamity's dying wish was to be buried next to Hickok. Over twenty years later, that's exactly what happened.
Population estimates for Deadwood at the time were anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 - the largest population ever in its history.
In 1877, the Homestake Mining Company was bought by mining mogul George Hearst and became the deepest, longest-operating and most profitable gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. Cool! That year a Chinatown also develops in lower Deadwood. (Woohoo! Granpa could live there for sure, huh?)
In 1878, Deadwood gets its first telephones - just one year after President Hayes had phones installed in the White House!
Two years after Chinatown is established in Deadwood the city government finds it necessary to attempt controlling the use of opium by taxing and licensing the opium dens. (Who says Americans are the only capitalists? Opium dens were profit centers!) (And, by the way, Granpa CAN'T live there!!) That same year, Deadwood suffers the first of several city-wide fires, destroying over 300 buildings and leaving some 2,000 people homeless. Within six months they had rebuilt the town with brick and stone structures. Even so, the 1880 population had dwindled to about 3,700.
In 1883 the first electric lights are turned on in Deadwood. (Nikola Tesla didn't showcase electric lights at the Chicago World's Fair until ten years later!) (Tesla was Edison's rival.)
In 1889, South Dakota legislators pass prohibition in May, and South Dakota is admitted to statehood in November.
1890 sees the population drop to about 2,000. Ol' Custer's 7th Cavalry massacres the Lakota Indians near Wounded Knee Creek. (But Custer himself had been killed at Little Big Horn in 1876.)
A second fire hits the Main Street district of Deadwood in 1894 taking out Seth Bullock's hardware store, so Seth Bullock builds a 64-room sandstone hotel. (That's HUGE for 1894!) This remains even today - and some say ol' Seth's ghost still roams the hallways at night.
In 1898 a provision is added to South Dakota's constitution making gambling and prostitution illegal. Deadwood's population rebounds to about 3,500.
In 1903, Wind Cave, found in the area of Deadwood, becomes the nation’s seventh national park. Today, Wind Cave National Park is the world’s fourth longest cave.
Five years later, President Theodore Roosevelt declares Jewel Cave a National Monument thereby providing for its preservation. Jewel Cave is currently the world’s second longest cave with 147 miles. (Take THAT Wind Cave!)
In 1911 President William Howard Taft visits Deadwood. I guess it's because of the railroads that he was getting around the country so good. If you'll go to our early post about Centre Hill in Virginia you will find him there, too! Taft was the first president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside of Washington, D.C.
The rest is pretty much what I would call modern history. Today Deadwood is not much bigger than the old timey photo at the top of this post. If you want a quick biography of ol' Wild Bill, click on the link below. It's said that he killed as many as 100 men in gunfights during his life - all of them "legal" kills - he was anti-slavery, acted as a Union spy during the Civil War, drove a stagecoach, cleaned up lawless towns as a sheriff, and acted for two years in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show before turning up dead in Deadwood.
