An expedition led by Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer in 1874 confirmed rumors of gold on the Sioux Reservation. Prospectors - and those looking to mine the pockets of the miners - descended on the Black Hills, although it was illegal to trespass on Indian lands. No one knows for sure who first found gold sparkling in his prospector’s pan in Whitewood Creek in Deadwood Gulch but Frank Bryant is generally given credit in August 1875. A sprawling community spread down the narrow gulch almost instantly. In fact Deadwood, named for the many fallen trees in the gulch, grew to its approximate current size within a few years of its founding.
The raucous mining town gained a national reputation for lawlessness, a badge of dishonor that hung around after it had morphed into a prosperous Victorian town. The rugged topography allowed for little new growth and as other towns developed into ranching centers or mining towns Deadwood became an urban oasis wrapped in a service economy. Some of those services smacked of the town’s upbringing - the last of Deadwood’s brothels did not shut down until 1980.
Deadwood has been plagued by floods and fires through its history. The worst conflagration broke out in a bakery on Sherman Street in the early morning hours of September 26, 1879. The fire spread quickly to Jensen and Bliss’s Hardware where it ignited eight kegs of gunpowder. The subsequent explosion caused the fire to sweep quickly through the town, destroying three hundred buildings and leaving two thousand homeless. All of the town’s founding buildings were obliterated. The streetscape of Deadwood today is studded with Victorian-style buildings raised in the ashes of that historic blaze, constructed with stone and brick and not vulnerable wood.
In 1961 the entire town was designated a National Historic Landmark and indeed it seemed as if Deadwood was slipping into an era of somnambulism. Interstate 90 bypassed it and there were more fires. In 1989 gambling was legalized in Deadwood, the first small community to turn to gaming revenues to maintain local historic qualities and the town became rejuvenated as a tourist destination. Our walking tour will work back and forth through the narrow gulch and we will begin not 100 yards from the spot where some miner filled that first prospecting pan with gold...
Although it is America’s second smallest capital city, and has been for the better part of its 120+ years as capital, Pierre is not a compact place. Its development has been marked by divisions since its origins as a steamboat landing for Fort Pierre across the Missouri River.
Pierre Chouteau, manager of the Western Department of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, built one of many outposts along the river in 1832. It was roughly half way between headquarters in St. Louis and the far reaches of the trappers in Montana. Fort Pierre evolved into a bustling stopping off point for travelers leaving the Missouri River steamboats and jumping onto the wagon road to the Black Hills, where gold was discovered in 1877. In 1880 the Chicago and North Western Railroad ran its tracks up to the undeveloped Pierre and Fort Pierre quickly drained of population.
For the first years of the 1880s Pierre was a boomtown, or more specifically East Pierre was a boomtown as it jostled with West Pierre as the town hub. After 1884 West Pierre emerged as the heart of the business district but meanwhile owners of the land “on the hill” battled the owners of land “on the flat” in West Pierre.
While this bickering was on-going inside Pierre all the residents had to unite in the skirmish to retain the capital after the town was so elected when Dakota Territory was split into two new states in 1889. Other towns coveted the prize and Pierre had to endure two more statewide referendums before it couldrest comfortably as the permanent state capital. To settle the matter once and for all a handsome statehouse was erected on a ledge on the bluff above the Missouri River and that is where we will begin our walking tour...