Road Trip #4: Deadwood, South Dakota

We made it to the town of Deadwood.

With all the history this place has, I was kind of disappointed that it was more centered around tourism and casinos than it's history.  This place really wasn't what we imagined.

We walked up and down the streets, checking out the old buildings, most of which are either Saloons, gift shops or Casinos.  There were a couple of hotels, too. Some of the buildings had plaques outside describing a little of the history.   

This is the Bullock Hotel, one of the older buildings in town.  It's reported to be haunted.  We did not see any paranormal activity in it while we were there.

One of the saloons was advertising a $1.00 lunch special, so Tom told Winston and I he'd take us out to lunch.  It consisted of a hot dog, chips and soda.  Hey, it's 50 cents cheaper than Costco!  What a bargain!

This is the building that sits on the site of the old saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was killed.  It's for sale if anyone's interested.

One of the casinos was called 'The Celebrity'.  Inside they had lots of clothes and props from different movies.  Winston is standing in front of one of the original Herbies.

At one point, we found the old train depot, which is the information center for Deadwood.  It's kind of like a small museum, and it was free.  We walked through that, then I wanted to walk through the real museum they had in town.  Tom and Winston wanted to go see the Broken Boot gold mine that was supposed to be just up the street.  We parted ways with the intention of meeting up on the grassy area outside the depot in an hour.  When I finished with the museum and walking around, I went to the depot and sat on a bench where I could see the grassy area.  Evidently Tom walked by a couple of times and didn't see me sitting on the grass, so he went on to other things.  We kept missing each other for about another hour.  Finally, I went and sat on the grass, and the guys caught up with me.  A whole hour pretty much wasted.

One of the sights we wanted to see was the Mt. Moriah Cemetary where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried.  We were going to walk to it, but after we saw the hill you had to climb to get there, we decided to take the car.  Even after we drove there, there was a LOT of climbing.  I don't know how they hauled all those bodies up that hill to be buried.  Crazy people!  The weather was so hot too, we got pretty dehydrated before we were done.

Here's Wild Bill Hickock's grave.  It's been moved at least once and vandalized a few times.  Calamity Jane is buried next to him, per her request.

All-in-all, it was a some-what interesting day spent there.  But really it was a lot of hype and everyone wanted your money.  Even the museum that was 'donation only' had a guy standing at the door making sure you were donating the requested $5 per person.  And Tom & Winston never did make it to the Broken Boot mine.  It was farther than they were told, and when we finally drove there they wanted $5 per person just to walk into the mine.  I guess we can say we've 'been there and done that.'

On to bigger and better!