Long a fan of Wild West history, Jeff has been wanting to go to Deadwood, South Dakota, for ages, so it only made sense that it be our first true destination. After leaving Wind Cave on Monday, we headed north and grabbed breakfast in the town of Custer after a brief moment of terror where I thought I’d left my wallet the day before in the Wind Cave Visitor Center.
We passed a few single-lane construction areas on the way to Deadwood, where we had to wait for the flag person and the lead vehicle. At the first one, we had to catch the flag person’s attention as he was distracted by his phone. Thankfully Jeff was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be driving through, so he saved us all from trouble. Construction techniques and materials were evaluated along the way and found wanting in a few places. You can remove the engineer from his desk, but he’s still an engineer.
After parallel parking the truck and trailer suspiciously easily near the Old Town district, we were greeted by a wall of skeletons on this fence. Sure, why not. I’m game.
Unsurprisingly, the wood-framed shacks of the Wild West mining era (1876) burned down shortly after the town was officially formed, so we didn’t expect to see them. Nowadays it has some interesting turn of the century buildings, made from brick and locally quarried stone.
Ok, so what is Deadwood like today?
Take a 1900s era Main Street movie set and fill it with slot machines and kitschy souvenir shops. Next, slap an old timey name or a reference to Wild Bill onto everything standing. Then, charge a fee for anything history-related, such as $10 to walk into the room where Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead playing poker (not joking) or $4 to enter the city cemetery where he and Calamity Jane are buried (again, not joking) and you have the modern tourist-trap that is Deadwood.
Can you imagine wanting to visit your mom’s grave or granddad’s final resting spot and having to pay $4 — cash only! — to do so? I sure hope there’s some local workaround because that’s just appalling.
Now run an endless parade of converted school busses between all points, blaring a canned audio tour the whole time. How-dee, Calamity! This here hooch is got a wicked kick!
We could have skipped the town, and maybe we should have, but part of the trip is seeing places and finding out what they’re like. Now we know. Deadwood isn’t a do-over for us.
That said, the post office was beautiful and reminded me a lot of the one in Boise. My guess is they’re from the same time period.
The courthouse has a lovely ceiling mural.
This restaurant’s metal shutters were fantastic.
And there’s something quite grand about this hotel’s curved brick facade.
We were going to overnight in the National Forest just outside of town but chose to head out immediately since we still had lots of daylight left.
Leave a comment