A short stop in Deadwood turned into a walk through Wild West history, from Saloon No. 10 to the legends of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
After our tour coach stopped at the hotel in Lead, we were given twenty minutes to rest. Our driver then offered to drop anyone off in nearby Deadwood, and I didn’t need asking twice. I had hoped to visit Mount Moriah Cemetery, where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried, but a local mudslide had closed the road. With the cemetery unreachable, I decided to explore Main Street instead.
Exploring Deadwood.
Deadwood is a town with a colourful past, but these days most of the main streets are lined with casinos, bars and restaurants. I wandered along until I reached Saloon No. 10, the bar that claims to be the place where Wild Bill Hickok was shot. In truth, the original saloon no longer exists, and the replica sits across the street from the real location. A marker shows where the original stood.
Saloon 10 itself is a pleasant enough bar. I had a meal there and then posed for a photo in my Arsenal shirt beneath a wall of memorabilia. After that, I played a game of pool in the adjoining hall before heading out to catch a bus back to the hotel. Fortunately, as I waited at the stop, a few others from the tour spotted me, and we all shared a taxi back. Once at the hotel, I finished the evening with a couple of beers in the bar before heading to bed.
History of Deadwood.
Deadwood was settled illegally in the 1870s on land granted to the Lakota people under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Early settlers named it after the dead trees found in the gulch. The town boomed during the Black Hills Gold Rush and became a magnet for well‑known Wild West figures such as Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok.
It was here that Wild Bill Hickok was famously killed. Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head while he was playing poker. The hand of cards Hickok supposedly held at the time, two pairs of black aces and eights, became known as the “dead man’s hand,” a phrase that has lived on in Western folklore ever since.
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