The boom town of Deadwood is better known for its colorful characters rather than its gold bonanza. Gold and greed bred a lawless camp of saloons, card parlors, dance halls and bordellos. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are two of the well known frontier legends of Deadwood Gulch. Calamity (Martha Jane Canary) lived by the creed to never go to bed sober, alone, and with one red cent in your pocket. James Butler Hickok, full time gambler, spent less than a month in Deadwood. Shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall, Wild Bill is said to have been clutching black pairs of aces and eight.
Today's Old Style Saloon #10, the only museum with a bar, puts on a live reenactment of the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok. Mini buses and a walking tour takes visitors to Historic Main Street, a five block area of historic preservation. The 1880s structures, brick paving, vintage streetlights were saved with gambling dollars when Deadwood legalized gambling in 1989. Today, the entire town is a National Historic District, based on Deadwood's glory years.
The Broken Boot Mine was re-opened in 1954, reintroducing 100 year old tunnels to the curious. High above Deadwood, on Mt. Mariah, is another historic landmark, Boot Hill Cemetery. Here the graves of Calamity Jane and James Hickok are found. A handful of local legends round out cemetery headstones, including Preacher Smith and Madame Du Fran. Here on Mt Mariah, a panoramic viewpoint looks out over Deadwood and South Dakota's Black Hills.