When Tom, Vicki, and I left Mount Rushmore National Memorial behind, I had no idea of where we were headed next – except when I heard my photographer’s wife say she wanted to find a bagel place in Keystone. When Vicki returned to the van, with a bagel in hand from Grapes & Grinds, that’s when I first learned of our next destination, which turned out to be the historic mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Even though the town sounded “touristy” to me, I was excited for the opportunity to visit the gravesite of Wild Bill Hickok; plus, I figured we’d also spend some time in and around the saloon where Hickok was killed.
After a 47-mile ride from Keystone, it was ‘High Noon’ on September 18, 2023 when the three of us arrived at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, located on a mountainous plateau overlooking the town of Deadwood. When Tom carried me up to the Admissions Booth, which was a small building across the road from the Visitor Center, I shook my head when my photographer pitched a beef about having to pay two bucks to get into the cemetery. I heard him say to the woman in the booth: “We have to pay to get inside this cemetery? I’ve been to some of the most famous cemeteries in the country and never had to pay a dime to get in. It’s not the about the money, it’s the principle. I could understand a donation jar, but it’s disappointing there’s a forced monetary fee just to pay our respects to a historical person.” At first, I thought he was complaining because he’s cheap, but the more I heard his reasoning, Tom was right – even though the woman told my photographer the fee was to offset maintenance costs. After my companion handed over the four bucks, it made my original thoughts about Deadwood spot on – the town was a tourist trap. As a matter of fact, during our hike up the steep quarter-mile paved incline towards Hickok’s gravesite, I wondered if there would be a souvenir stand or hot dog vendor alongside the burial plot.
It took roughly ten minutes for my photographer to ‘huff and puff’ his way to the gravesite. But once we got to the fence-enclosed burial plot, I was impressed by what I saw – the tombstone was actually a bronze bust of Wild Bill Hickok situated on an ornate pedestal. Seconds after we first saw Wild Bill’s monument, we noticed there was another grave of a historical figure located roughly ten feet to the east. It turned out to be the final resting place of Calamity Jane, which gave Tom and I a two-for-one deal of famous Wild West gravesites.
Due to the iron fence that surrounded Hickok’s grave, along with a never-ending stream of curious visitors strolling in the area, I wasn’t able to stand on Wild Bill’s final resting place. Had Bob Moldenhauer been at the cemetery with us, Mongo would have likely scaled the fence and placed me on the grave. But there was no way my fat photographer was going to get his large carcass over the fence and back out again. After waiting patiently for over ten minutes, however, Tom did manage to set me on the grave of Calamity Jane where I had a good look at both grave markers side by side.
James Butler Hickok, better known as “Wild Bill” Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. It’s hard to think about the Wild West and not envision Wild Bill, even though many of his exploits may have been fabricated by himself to enhance his fame. But one event he didn’t concoct came on August 2, 1876, when the 39-year-old Hickok sat at the poker table inside the Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood. During the poker game of five-card stud, a man known as “Crooked Nose” Jack McCall entered the saloon and made his way behind Hickok. After he looked at Hickok’s poker hand, McCall shouted “Damn you. Take that!” and shot Wild Bill in the back of the head at point-blank range. The famous Wild West legend was dead; slumped face down on the table with his cards, two black aces, two black eights, and the nine of diamonds, still in his hand. Since that moment, those cards have been known as the “dead man’s hand”. On March 1, 1877, Jack McCall was executed by hanging for assassinating Hickok.
Martha Jane Canary, better known as Calamity Jane, was an enigma in the Wild West. Over the years, she had spun tales about herself being involved in deadly skirmishes with Indians in Wyoming; that she was a messenger for the military and once swam 90 miles to deliver important dispatches; and had saved Captain James Egan when she caught him as he fell from his horse after being shot. According to Canary, she was given her famous nickname while Captain Egan was recovering from his wounds when he allegedly said: “I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.” In July 1876, Jane joined a wagon train in Fort Laramie, which was where she met Wild Bill Hickok, and she headed north for Deadwood. Even though Canary had claimed she was once married to Hickok, and divorced him, no records exist to verify her claim. As a matter of fact, it’s been said that Wild Bill couldn’t stand Calamity Jane – likely because of her obsessive drinking and for her ‘manly appearance’. That’s right, Calamity Jane looked like a man; she definitely smelled like a man; she drank like a man; dressed like man; and cussed like a whole boatload of sailors. But at the end of the day, even with all of her faults, Jane had a heart of gold and would help anyone in need.
When Hickok was murdered by Jack McCall on August 2, 1876, Calamity Jane claimed to have tried to kill McCall with a meat cleaver. Her attempt to avenge Hickok’s murder failed because Jane said she had left her guns at her residence.
In 1893, Calamity Jane began to make appearances in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows as a storyteller; and let me tell her, that girl could spin some fantastic yarns. Eight years later, Jane also participated in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, which made me wonder if she met President William McKinley before he was assassinated. The sad fact was – Calamity Jane was such a broken drunk by that time and quickly became the scourge of the Expo when she was jailed. Jane was sent packing once she was released, which caused Buffalo Bill Cody to say of his long-time friend, “I expect she was no more tired of Buffalo than the Buffalo police were of her.”
The one fact about Calamity Jane that wasn’t fabricated was her compassion to help the sick and needy. Shortly after Wild Bill’s death, Jane nursed victims of the smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area. She continued to help the downtrodden for the rest of her life, even though Jane couldn’t help herself due to her addiction to liquor. In late July 1903, Canary boarded an ore train to Terry, South Dakota, which wasn’t too far from Deadwood. Once again, Jane was drinking heavily, but this time she fell severely ill. When the train arrived at Terry, the conductor carried Jane from the train and to the Calloway Hotel where the bartender secured a room for her. Even though a doctor was summoned and treated her, Calamity Jane’s condition worsened, and she died at the age of 51 on August 1, 1903 from pneumonia and inflammation of the bowels.
Following her death, four men in charge of her funeral made sure they had Calamity Jane buried next to Wild Bill Hickok at Mt. Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood. While some people believe it was a few men’s way of a posthumous joke towards Hickok because the famous gunfighter couldn’t stand being around her; others believe the burial was within Calamity Jane’s dying wishes. Either way, the side-by-side graves helped make Mt. Moriah Cemetery a curiosity seeker’s paradise, as well as a tourist trap.
At one point, shortly after Tom stepped over a small retaining wall and set me onto the gravesite of Calamity Jane where I posed for a few photos, I heard a man’s voice say to my photographer: “Hey, I know you – you’re from Michigan. I recognized your Teddy Roosevelt ballcap.” I couldn’t believe my painted eyes. The guy turned out to be the same Michigan State fan from Holland, Michigan we had met at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana two days earlier. While Tom and Vicki talked to the guy for a few minutes, I kept an eye out for his cute wife – but unfortunately, she was nowhere to be seen.
As the three of us headed down the hill, through the entrance gate, and back towards the van, there was no doubt in my mind we had gotten our money’s worth at Mt. Moriah Cemetery. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were Wild West legends and I got to visit both of their gravesites. Plus, we crossed paths with the Holland guy again. Now it was time to visit the site where Wild Bill had met his demise, which was less than a mile away along Main Street in the historic section of Deadwood.
While Vicki drove our Truckster along Main Street in search of a parking spot, it quickly became obvious I was absolutely correct when I predicted the town would be touristy. It seemed as though every building along the historic section of town featured a tee-shirt shop, a restaurant, a saloon, or a casino; and in some instances, all four. But Deadwood wasn’t always a place where parents could spend the day with their kids buying them ice cream, tee shirts, and cheap Chinese-made souvenirs. From 1876 to 1879, which was the town’s heyday years, gold was discovered in the area and people from all over the country came to Deadwood, as well as the neighboring town of Lead, to mine for gold. While the dirt-filled streets of Deadwood once featured Old West figures such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Colorado Charlie Utter, Texas Jack, California Joe, Buffalo Bill Cody, Doc Holliday, Poker Alice, Wyatt Earp & Potato Creek Johnny, it also was a place of lawlessness. Murders were commonplace; justice for murders was not always fair and impartial; and prostitution was the biggest business in town. Like the late great Meat Loaf once said, ‘one out of three ain’t bad’!
One of the famed Deadwood events Tom and Vic wanted to take me to see was the Wild Bill Hickok assassination re-enactment at the Old Style No. 10 Saloon, but the place was packed when we walked into the saloon at 12:55pm for the one o’clock show. That meant we had some time to kill if we wanted to see Bill killed at three.
The first thing we did was walk north along Main Street to the next block where we went inside a place called Wild Bill Bar – but our visit wasn’t because Tom was parched and wanted to order a couple of ‘red eyes’. Instead, it was the site where Wild Bill Hickok was killed on August 2, 1876, and my photographer heard there was an accurate depiction of the assassination scene on display in the bar’s basement – including the “authentic replica poker table” where Wild Bill was sitting when he was shot. However, when Tom found out there was a ten-dollar charge to see a fake table, combined with the fact the original Saloon No. 10 was destroyed by fire in 1879, my cheap photographer walked back out and onto the street where he took exterior images of me in front of the site.
Before my two companions found a place to eat lunch, Tom stopped in a place called Happy Days Gifts where he bought himself a tee shirt. But it wasn’t an ordinary Wild Bill shirt. Instead, his shirt featured a silhouette of Sasquatch on the front with the wording “Deadwood, SD – Hide & Seek World Champion”. With his souvenir shirt in hand, the three of us ended up at the Buffalo Stockade for lunch, which was directly across the street from the Old Style Saloon No. 10 where we needed to be for the three o’clock ‘Deadwood Alive’ show.
After Tom and Vic ate their lunch, the three of us made our way across the street and into the saloon where we found a table closest to the poker table where the assassination re-enactment was scheduled to take place. We were forty-five minutes early, which was better than five minutes late, because we had the best seats in the house. Unless, of course, we sat alongside Wild Bill at the poker table.
When the show started precisely at three o’clock, I saw Wild Bill Hickok standing within a few feet of me. Even though I knew it was Deadwood Alive actor Travis Pearson who was portraying the historic gunfighter, Wild Bill looked like he just stepped out of the pages of the history books. After Pearson delivered an impressive oral history about Hickok’s adult life, he sat at the poker table with three volunteers from the audience. Suddenly, ‘Crooked Nose’ Jack McCall walked onto the scene. Seconds later, after Hickok said, “The old duffer, he broke me on the hand”, McCall, played by actor Sean Baxter, aimed his pistol at the back of Wild Bill’s head and pulled the trigger. “Damn you. Take that!”
When the show was over, the two Deadwood Alive actors hung around the poker table where they met people and posed for photographs. I knew for sure Tom would let me pose with the two gunslingers, but I didn’t realize Jack McCall would point his gun at the back of my head. Although McCall didn’t pull the trigger, I did have flashbacks of Ford’s Theater for a moment. During our short meet and greet, both Travis Pearson and Sean Baxter asked my photographer, “So what’s the story with the bobble head?” Tom handed each man one of his blog informational cards and explained to them some of the places we have visited over the years. They seemed genuinely blown away, which didn’t surprise me – after all, they portray historical figures in a very historic town. Not only did the pair compliment Tom on his Frisco Rough Rider’s baseball hat, because it featured a likeness of Teddy Roosevelt as its logo, but they also encouraged the three of us to visit the Friendship Tower at the top of nearby Mt. Roosevelt. Before the duo left the saloon for their next show in the street, Pearson walked up to Vicki, who was chatting on FaceTime with her twin grandsons, and wished Bo and Rory a happy birthday.
Back outside, the three of us hung around for the scheduled four o’clock “Shootout” on Main Street. The performance, called “Showdown on Gold Street”, is featured in Deadwood every Monday through Saturday; but “there’s no killin’ on Sunday”. Once again, Deadwood Alive brought the Old West to life for us, at least in a touristy sort of way. The ten-minute street performance, which was led by Travis Pearson as Johnny, featured a card game gone wrong when a poker player named Charlie was accused of cheating at five-card stud.
When the shootout had finished, the three of us headed to the van. I figured Vicki had had enough fun for one day, but Tom insisted on us making the trek to the summit of Mt. Roosevelt for a late afternoon visit to the Friendship Tower suggested by Travis and Sean in the saloon.
Once we made the 4.5-mile drive northwest of downtown Deadwood, we arrived at the parking lot on Mt. Roosevelt, but there was no monument in sight. What my photographer didn’t realize was he and his wife had a nearly three-quarter-mile uphill hike ahead of them. With the aid of their hiking sticks, my two companions and I started out on what seemed to be a never-ending walk in the woods. Every so often, Tom and Vic found a tree stump along the rugged trail to rest on. Then finally, after what felt like an eternity, we arrived at the 31-foot-tall stone structure known as the Mount Theodore Roosevelt Monument, or “Friendship Tower” as it was called by Jack McCall impersonator Sean Baxter.
Back in the day, when Theodore Roosevelt was a deputy sheriff in Medora, North Dakota, he met up with Seth Bullock who was the sheriff of Deadwood. The two became lifelong friends. When Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, Bullock wanted to honor his friend with a monument. With the help of a group known as the Society of the Black Hills Pioneers, the stone tower was constructed and dedicated on July 4, 1919. The Friendship Tower was the first tribute to honor President Roosevelt’s legacy.
The tower reminded me of some of the lighthouses Tom and I have visited in Michigan, except this one wasn’t near any of the Great Lakes. Once we made it to the observation deck at the top, which was a huge effort on my photographer’s part because of the high-stepped spiral staircase he was forced to climb with his bad knees, the two of us had a panoramic view of the surrounding Black Hills. I agreed with Tom when I heard him yell down to his wife, who was relaxing on a picnic table after she refused to climb the tower, “The view from up here is lackluster at best. All I see is trees, and a few hills way off in the distance. It’s very disappointing to hike all the way up here for this.”
It was roughly 5:45pm by the time we returned to the van, and I knew the “Hike from Heck” had been somewhat strenuous for my photographer when I saw him collapse into the passenger seat. But after he chugged down a bottle of water and sat in the air conditioning for a few minutes, he was no worse for wear.
From our excursion at Mt. Roosevelt, we headed directly for our room at the Mountain View Lodge near Hill City, South Dakota – which took about an hour to make the 43-mile drive. Thankfully we made it back before sunset and didn’t have any encounters with wayward critters in the road or spaceships in the sky. For a brief moment, my photographer grappled with the idea of watching the nighttime lighting ceremony at Mount Rushmore, but his newfound distaste for the memorial put the kiboshes to that. Instead, he heated up the remaining hotdogs in the microwave oven and the two of us watched Monday Night Football on TV. Vicki ate a hotdog, then retired to her room; we never saw her the rest of the night.
From my usual perch alongside the television set, I stood sentinel throughout the night and thought about life in the Old West. Even though Deadwood was extremely touristy, the re-enactments we saw seemed very realistic, plus they gave us a glimpse of the past. We had walked in the actual footsteps of Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and of course, Calamity Jane.
While those folks will never compare to the likes of Jefferson, Polk, Kennedy, or either Roosevelt in my eyes, Deadwood was still a cool experience – even when that cool-factor turned ice cold. That’s right – the moment I felt the cold steel of Jack McCall’s pistol brush against the back of my resin head, I knew I was at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer. And that was a feeling I won’t soon forget.
** This post is dedicated to Travis Pearson and Sean Baxter, two Deadwood Alive actors who brought their alter egos, Wild Bill Hickok and Jack McCall, to life for us. **
