- Deadwood, SD
Moseyed around this morning waiting for the windshield repairman to appear. He was promptly here at 10 AM and set right to work. It took him about 90 minutes to replace the windshield. Then, we set off for Deadwood.
About 5 minutes into the drive, we realized that the air conditioner fan was making a horrendous sound--almost like the good old days when as children we used to clip playing cards onto the spokes of our bicycle wheels to make them sound fierce with a flip-flip-flip sound.
I called the repairman and, of course, he assured us it was nothing that he had done. He suggested we take the car to the GMC dealer the next day and get it checked out. If he caused damage, he said he'd pay for the repairs. So, we proceeded onward to Deadwood.
Our first stop was the visitor. Usually the people that staff these centers are very helpful. As you may remember, there was virtually no help in Lead, which is the town next to Deadwood. Anyway, in Deadwood, she was about as forth-coming with information as nothing. We did drag out of her that we could take the trolley from that location into town (probably only about 4 large city blocks) to book a tour of the town. I grabbed some brochures from the "fly trap" about the three tours available. And, we sat and waited for the trolley. And waited. And waited. Finally, it arrived. When we thought we were heading for town, it took a jaunt toward out of town. We thought we might be on the wrong trolley and headed back to Spearfish! But, shortly, the trolley driver turned us back toward town. Phew.
Most town trolleys charge one fee for an on-off/all-day ticket, and they also provide some brief talks about the locations you pass. Not this one. It was $1 per-person per hop on. No talk. So, we determined not to board again unless we really had to.
We arrived at the kiosk for the tour buses and promptly booked a 5 PM tour. It was currently about 2 PM, and we still had to eat lunch. We knew that we wanted to watch the "play" that's presented at 8 PM at the far end of town. It's called the "Trial of Jack McCall." McCall is the man that shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back as he sat playing cards.
Back to lunch. We were told by the kiosk operator and a nearby tourist that we should go to the Saloon No. 10 for lunch. The restaurant was upstairs (but they had an elevator in the back). Of course, one-arm-bandits and the saloon took up the first floor. We headed for the back of the building to find the elevator and were stopped short by an on-going stage show which completely blocked the entry the elevator. Fortunately, the outlaw actor was in the process of choosing kids to participate. So, I interrupted him and asked if we could pass on through. He said yes, but my "pass" would be a hug. I could deal with it. So, I hugged. Dave approached him and said, "You'll get no hug from me, Bucko." Of course, the audience loved it, so Dave was allowed to accompany me.
The meal was good. We dallied as we knew we had a long time to go before the 5 PM tour. We decided to walk around town and see what there was to see. And, of course, Dave wanted to go shopping. He loves to window-shop, and I just abhor it unless I have a specific objective. But, the shops are interesting, to some degree, so off we went.
I found a cute Cowboy charm. Dave found a beautiful, heavy, wide, fully-studded turquoise bracelet. He really loved it, but we knew it would be way out of our price range. When the saleswoman showed it to us, she cut the price so much, Dave just couldn't say no. It is really a great piece and it's his big find of this trip. In all of our dilling and dallying, we lost track of the time, and almost missed the tour bus. We had 2 minutes to get there, but we made it.
I took a picture of the bracelet on my arm so that you could see just how big this bracelet really is.
Here's the oldest building left in town (the red building), the jewelry shop where Dave purchased his bracelet (the blue building), and the back of our tour bus.
The tour was pretty good. And, I was glad that we were on a bus. The road to Boot Hills was VERY steep and very narrow. And, once we got there, we would have had to park very far away and "hike" up to the notorious grave sites. Because we were on the bus, we got to park fairly close. After walking up a couple of flights of stairs to get to the graves, we had seats to sit on. The driver must have talked for about 15 minutes giving us all the history of the town folks buried there.
Calamity Jane is buried right next to Wild Bill. Wild Bill has the large statue. Calamity just has this marker. Their graves were moved up to the new Boot Hill after the new cemetery was completed.
Boot Hill is not in the original place it once stood. The original Boot Hill ran out of space quickly and the town decided to create a second cemetery at the very top of the hill. This took up less-precious real estate because no one would want to go up and down the hill for housing. The town decided once up, was enough for most folks.
The town is in a very narrow gulch. The hills on each side are extremely high. I could see in the 1880s that it would be a great place to hide out. You could see anyone that approached from either end of town, if you had a stakeout. We learned that the town had completely burned down in the late 1800s, so when it was rebuilt, most buildings were constructed of stone and brick.
Overview of town from Boot Hill.
After our tour, we did some more walking around town. We went into a few shops, but Dave has now spent his wad on the bracelet, and of course, I'm no much interested. But, he did find some pins for his military service days and I found the greatest deck of playing cards. Each card has the story of a notorious person that was associated with Deadwood. So, now I have a useful history "book."
We slowly meandered around town and our destination was the far end of town where the play would be held. We found the plaque designating the location of the original saloon where Wild Bill was gunned down.
We found a bench in front of the Franklin Hotel, which was built in 1903. The view from under the portico at the hotel was of Boot Hill; it's at the top of the hill in this picture.
At the hotel, we did what we like best for the next hour: people watched. There was a guy that was standing on a second floor balcony across from us. At first we thought he was a tourist. But, then we realized he was counting jay walkers. It really became entertaining to watch him record folks. Some he would just click on a hand-held counter. Others, he would write something about. So, this passed an hour for us with simple entertainment.
At about 7:30 we walked up to the Masonic Temple where the trial would be held and purchased our tickets from Miss Kitty (yes, a saloon floozy). We found another bench and soon enough, the gunfight was held in the middle of town. Jack McCall was being drug up the street to stand trial. Naturally, there was a huge crowd of folks to follow and a tour bus had let out their bus load who were now lined up at the door of the temple.
As soon as the sheriff, judge, Calamity Jane, and Jack McCall arrived, everyone crowded in to purchase their tickets. We were one step ahead because we already had ours, so we just dashed up to the front of the theater and got front-row seats.
The actors picked 12 jury members and about 4 witnesses from the audience to play parts. So, that was fun. There was one little kid that they picked to be the court's sheriff. He was adorable. He took his part seriously, and I think he beat that poor actor playing Jack McCall with a rolled-up newspaper so much that he would have been black and blue by morning.
Here's the kid being sworn in and Jack McCall is in the chair.
Here's the interesting story of Jack McCall, as taken from Wikipedia (and so faithfully replayed in Deadwood's presentation):
Many of the details of McCall's life are lost. He was raised in Kentucky with three sisters, but drifted west and became a buffalo hunter. By 1876, he was living in a gold mining camp called Deadwood, South Dakota, under the alias of Bill Sutherland.
On August 2, 1876, in the Nuttal & Mann's #10 Saloon in Deadwood, McCall shot Hickok in the back of the head with a double-action .45-caliber revolver, shouting "Take that!"
Hickok, in contrast to his normal habit of sitting in a corner to protect his back, sat (on that day) with his back to the door while engaged in a game of poker.
Ironically, the killing was apparently over McCall's drunken resentment of an act of generosity by Hickok--Hickok having offered McCall money to buy breakfast after McCall had lost it all playing poker the previous day.
McCall claimed, however, that the killing was retribution for Hickok having previously killed McCall's brother in Abilene, Kansas. McCall was found innocent after two hours deliberation by an impromptu court in McDaniel's Theater made up of local miners and businessmen, causing the Black Hills Pioneer to editorialize:
"Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man ... we would simply ask that our trial may take place in some of the mining camps of these hills."
McCall then fled town to Wyoming, where he bragged, at length, about how he had killed Hickok in a fair gunfight. Unfortunately for McCall, however, the Wyoming authorities refused to recognize the result of McCall's first trial on the grounds that Deadwood had been in Indian Territory at the time of the trial and contended that McCall could legally be tried again. Because Deadwood was an illegal settlement, with no legally constituted law enforcement or court system, the federal court in Yankton, Dakota Territory (D.T.), declared that double jeopardy did not apply.
McCall was retried in Yankton, D.T., for Hickok's murder, and was hanged on March 1, 1877, at the age of 24. McCall was the first person to be executed by United States officials in Dakota Territory. After his execution it was determined that McCall had never even had a brother.
It was a fun presentation in which the audience was able to participate, so we were glad we were up-front to witness it in detail. It was really crowded and there was standing room only. I took so many pictures and movies that my battery ran out. But, I captured most of it.
When the trial was over, we boarded the trolley back to the other end of town to our car. We had planned to leave Spearfish on Friday morning and head northwest. However, with the car now in need of a look-see, we had to stay another night and leave on Saturday, instead. We stopped at the office to pay up.
We didn't have dinner because we had eaten lunch so late, and it was quite filling. We just had some left-over cake and ice cream back at the RV and called it a night.
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