Deadwood South Dakota Bets On a Deadman’s HandRead Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com To read this entire feature FREE with photos cut and paste this link: http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/hotels/deadwood/deadwood.html
I grew up in these Black Hills — and history of Old West hell raising mining camp of Deadwood is embedded into these hills as deep as ore in 8,500 foot Homestake Mine up in Lead, now closed full of water, and soon to be a scientific underground laboratory.
You have probably seen Hollywood version of Deadwood on HBO. As a series, how close does it come to true life characters that put rawboned territorial town on map?
LEGENDS OF DEADWOOD
Wild Bill Hickok, born James Butler Hickok in Tiny Grove, Illinois on May 27, 1837. He married Mrs. Ames Thatcher on March 5, 1876 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Wild Bill was murdered in original Saloon No. 10 on August 2, 1876 by Jack McCall.
Quite aside from images of Black Hills gold rush and Sioux Indian wars, Deadwood is famed in public's mind as place where "Wild Bill" Hickok was murdered while playing poker in Saloon No.10, holding "Deadman's Hand" of aces, eights, and nine of diamonds.
Civil War spy, scout and sharpshooter, Indian fighter, frontier lawman and showman with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, Hickok was part of West's romantic image — aided no doubt by a Harper's New Monthly Magazine article about him in those terms in 1867
The reality was more complicated as a variety of books and Internet resources note.
Hickok joined a flood of miners, shopkeepers, prostitutes, card players, bunco artists and outlaws, invading raw and just-formed town of Deadwood in June of 1876.
By all accounts, his intent in coming to Deadwood was to separate prospectors and minters from their gold — not at point of a gun, but at poker tables with a winning hand and two pistols at hand for any sore losers in bunch.
Hickok was highly motivated — he was a newlywed with a wife to support. His bride, former Mrs. Agnes Thatcher, was waiting for Hickok back in Cheyenne.
One of first guns of West, Hickok could shoot with a pistol in both hands. He carried his guns butt forward in his belt — an awkward position for others, but it worked well for him. Historians debate how good he really was as a marksman, but few cared to get shot at by Hickok — calm, deliberate and unflustered when taking aim.