Tag: deadwood

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Deadwood’s Christmas Past

By Laura Andrews

How would Santa Claus rate the citizens of Deadwood? The Black Hills town has a naughty reputation, but the Historic Adams House is showcasing Deadwood’s nice side by sharing local holiday traditions in the 1890s for their guided tour,”A Very Deadwood Christmas.”

The skating rink on Sherman Street was one holiday hot spot.”According to the Deadwood Daily Pioneer Times, [it] had a tendency to get pretty crowded,” says Ellyn Van Evra, curator of interpretation at the Historic Adams House.”To liven the mood the Deadwood Orchestra played at the rink while people enjoyed skating.”

By the 1890s, gold rush fever had mellowed, and civic pride was on the rise.”One of the things that stuck out the most to me while I was researching information for these tours was how giving and community-oriented the residents of Deadwood were,” says Van Evra.”I am not only talking about businesses giving out food and goods or churches giving free dinners for the homeless, but also private residents opened their homes for those less fortunate so they would have a happy holiday.” Two such residents, Mr. and Mrs. Liebmann, made the season brighter for local orphans by giving them small Christmas presents.

Van Evra has many other examples of Deadwood’s spirit of giving to share with visitors to the Adams House. Guided holiday tours will be offered every hour between 10-4 pm on December 22 and 28 and 12-4 pm on December 22 and 29. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for children 7-14, and free to Deadwood History members and children six and younger. For more information, visit www.deadwoodhistory.com or call 605-578-3724.

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Guarded by Ghosts, Revealed by Angels

By Lee Schoenbeck

There are a lot of hiking trails in the Black Hills that take some local knowledge to enjoy. White Rocks is one of them. Former Deadwood resident Tony Tuscano of Texas suggested that the climb to White Rocks was worth the work. He was right. He described it as “the best view of Deadwood … the dominant hill over lower Deadwood.” Tony’s description was enough to get the hike on my bucket list.

Getting by the Ghosts

The directions to White Rocks involve the local cemetery, Mount Moriah. You need to go outside the cemetery proper and follow a trail described as”quite steep” for 750 feet to the grave of Seth Bullock. Up the hill and beyond the grave is a utility trail, and you keep following that to the top.

The ladies at the cemetery toll booth (you know you are amongst famous ghosts when people pay to get admitted) were helpful. The first volunteered, as she shook her head, that it was”really steep” to get to White Rocks. The other lady assured us that it was”a great view.” Both were exceptionally correct.

The Top is Right Above You

A strange thing about that trail is that you can see the white rocks as soon as you leave the cemetery, and they look about two miles away — straight up. There were a few people on top that we could barely distinguish, which makes you brace for a very long hike. But it’s a lot more like climbing a ladder. It is steep, but not long, which must create an optical illusion — or maybe I was passing out from a lack of oxygen.

Standing With the Angels

The hike is probably only twenty minutes each way, but worth it. When you climb up on the top of the rocks — which truly are white — you have a commanding view of Deadwood and the region. The devastation of the Grizzly Gulch fire remains immediately behind you. The logs are laying side by side along the humps of the lower mountains in a pattern that looks like fur on an animal’s back. The ladies at the booth said we could see four states, but until they do a better job of spray painting those state lines, who am I to say?

No Mountain Goats, But….

I was zoomed by some kind of a bird, saw turkey vultures circling (maybe looking for fallen hikers) and one family that climbed the rocks like mountain goats, but no dangerous wildlife. After we got down and had the mandatory engine-fueling ice cream, the lady serving us claimed a mountain lion lived up there! But she hadn’t been there for four years — I bet the ghosts got him.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.


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What’s Worth Saving in South Dakota?

By Bernie Hunhoff

A foreigner visited Yankton last week and made the comment that the historic downtown area seemed rather dilapidated. He was polite. I don’t think that he thought he was saying something we didn’t already know. But do we?

He should have seen the 1903 courthouse when it was being braced by timbers (before we tore it down). He should have seen the empty storefronts that now comprise the successful Riverfront Event Center, a beautiful hotel, eatery and meeting place. He should have seen the Gurney’s property before the preservation work that has been accomplished in the last 24 months.

But maybe we should also take a look through his eyes. Could we do better?

Should it concern us that we don’t practice preservation for preservation’s sake? We are not likely to save a building just because we value it; just because we think a future generation might find it interesting. That’s a gene we might have acquired from the Dust Bowl. Don’t fix up what might just blow away next year.

Despite that practical prairie approach, we’ve seen towns across South Dakota accomplish some laudable historic development. Our largest cities have led the way, not surprisingly. Rapid City and Sioux Falls have downtown districts that could rival any comparable city in America. Europeans might even find them interesting. As for smaller towns, Deadwood and Mobridge have accomplished much. Deadwood’s gambling revenues have made its progress possible, but Mobridge made it happen the old-fashioned way. Or is gambling the old way?

As for Yankton, this town has looked far worse at times. Beautification efforts and architectural improvements have been considerable. Bars and restaurants seem to thrive downtown. Retail isn’t as strong as we would like, but our downtown is still blessed with furniture stores, a fine hardware establishment, two pharmacies and several other smaller but vitally important speciality shops. And the downtown is a media center for the entire region — featuring two newspapers and two of the city’s three radio stations.

City taxpayers have invested several million dollars in improvements. The riverfront area has been transformed as a park. It’s hard to find any existing critic of the expensive conversion of the Meridian Bridge to pedestrian and bike traffic.

As we write this, city leaders are making plans to better connect the walking bridge to the downtown business district. The Masonic Temple is getting a facelift. The historic old Elks Lodge, vacant for many years, is about to be auctioned. Governor Daugaard got $6 million from the legislature to restore a few old buildings on the state hospital campus and then raze a number of others.

We’ve had successes and failures. A city of 14,000 can only do so much.

Should we expect more of our towns and our cities and ourselves in South Dakota? Or is the exercise world’s slogan “use it or lose it” good enough to double as our policy for historic preservation?

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Is This Jack McCall?

By John Andrews

When you hear the name Jack McCall, there’s probably one image that comes to mind: a black and white photo of a man with black hair, black mustache, black jacket and seated, facing the camera with his bent left arm resting on a table. We’ve come to accept that this is a photograph of McCall, but historians in Yankton, where was McCall was executed on this day in 1877 for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok, are skeptical.

I never gave the photo a second thought until our book, South Dakota Outlaws and Scofflaws, was released in August. I wrote a chapter on McCall, which features the image in question at the bottom of page 41. Not long after we finished the book, Yankton historian Bob Hanson visited our office and listed five or six reasons why he believes the man in the photo is not Jack McCall. The assassin’s age and various descriptions of his physical appearance don’t match, he said. McCall was called”Crooked Nose,” or”Broken Nose” Jack, and the nose on the photographed man doesn’t seem that crooked. Plus, McCall was no more than 25 years old when he died. The photographed man appears to be older.

A few months later I mentioned the controversy to Jim Lane, another Yankton historian who is married to our circulation director, Jana. He deepened the mystery by pointing out that no other image of McCall or his hanging has ever surfaced.

McCall’s trial and execution in Yankton were pivotal moments in Dakota history. His trial helped established the territorial court’s jurisdiction over Deadwood, and his execution — which was well reported attended by as many as 1,000 people — was Dakota Territory’s first. It seems astounding that no verified image (a photograph, sketch or woodcutting) has ever been seen, especially since Yankton was home to expertly trained photographer Stanley J. Morrow.

Morrow was an Ohio native who learned his trade as an apprentice to famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. Around 1868 he moved to Yankton and started a photography studio. His passion was as a traveling photographer, and his summers were spent traveling to forts, towns and reservations along the Missouri River making portraits and landscape scenes.

In the summer of 1876, around the same time McCall shot Hickok at Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Morrow left for the Black Hills to photograph the gold rush. He also spent time with Gen. George Crook’s troops, who had battled Indian tribes in the Slim Buttes of far northwestern South Dakota.

He arrived at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska in October 1876 and spent a month there photographing Indian leaders like Red Cloud. It is believed that Morrow returned to Yankton in mid-December, just a week or two after McCall’s trial had concluded. McCall spent January and February of 1877 in jail downtown, but either Morrow never attempted to photograph him or McCall never granted permission.

Even if Morrow wasn’t in Yankton, his wife Isa had the expertise and opportunity to capture an image of McCall. After the Morrows moved to Yankton, Stanley taught Isa how to make photographs, and she ran the studio while her husband was gone on photographic tours of Dakota.

Morrow left Yankton in 1883. Many of his images were lost in a fire, but about 500 that we know of have survived. And maybe an image of his, or another traveling photographer, depicting McCall has survived tucked away in someone’s attic or basement. Pay attention the next time you’re rifling through old boxes. You might be holding a never-before-seen piece of Dakota history.

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Say It with Chocolate

By Laura Andrews

Chocolate lovers Vickie and Mike Marotz of the Watertown Confectionery. Photo by John Andrews.

Valentine’s Day is synonymous with bouquets of flowers, sappy cards and red, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. But what if you want to keep your celebration local? South Dakota doesn’t have many bright blooms to boast of this time of year, and syrupy sentiment isn’t really our style. Luckily, three area chocolatiers can help you pay tribute to your love with handmade flair.

The folks at Mostly Chocolates have been delighting Rapid City palates for over 30 years. They are now working on the people of Pierre, where they opened up a second location in 2012. Try their chocolate roses, amaretto fudge, chocolate-covered cherry clusters — 3 big maraschino cherries dipped in milk chocolate — or sample their many other handmade chocolates. The Rapid City store also has a full espresso bar and a frozen yogurt bar with over 25 toppings available. For a special experience, gather a group of friends together for private chocolate-making classes with owner Peggy Kelly and her staff. Visit Mostly Chocolates at 1919 Mount Rushmore Road in Rapid City or 410 West Sioux Avenue #4 in Pierre.

The Watertown Confectionery covers everything from”I brew” to”I do.” Mike and Vickie Marotz’s Kemp Avenue store houses wine and beer-making facilities and an in-shop chapel for small, intimate weddings in addition to hand-dipped caramels, mint meltaways and other treats. If your sweetie has a sense of humor, hand them a South Dakota Cow Pie. Hopefully the name won’t scare them away from savoring the Marotzes’ concoction of chocolate, crushed English toffee and toasted coconut. You’ll find the Watertown Confectionery at 116 East Kemp Avenue in Watertown.

Mary”Chip” Tautkus’s Chubby Chipmunk has been receiving national attention lately — her Deadwood-made truffles were slipped into the swag bags given to performers and presenters at the Grammy and Country Music Association award ceremonies. Those with exotic tastes turn to the Chipmunk for chocolate made from Fortunato No. 4, a recently rediscovered variety of cacao plant long thought extinct. For a last-minute V-Day surprise, slide your cash in the”Chub-O-Matic” truffle vending machine next to Tautkus’s shop at 420 Cliff Street in Deadwood.

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Museum Pieces

Lori Holmberg, Dakota Discovery Museum director, says Gilfillan’s wagon is a permanent exhibit.

By Katie Hunhoff

The coming winter will force South Dakotans to seek indoor amusement, and high on our list should be a visit to local museums. You might be surprised at what you find. Our writers found all sorts of treasures when we did a search for our state’s most interesting and unusual museum artifacts.

Right beneath our noses, in our hometown of Yankton where we publish South Dakota Magazine, we found a Native American pipe bag with an amazing story at the Dakota Territorial Museum. The bag was the centerpiece of a collection of Indian artifacts gathered by Andrew J. Faulk, a 1860s trader and later the third governor of Dakota Territory. Crow Indians probably made the tanned, 43-inch long deer hide bag.

The bag’s recent history is almost as intriguing as its past. In 1995, it was stolen from the museum. For eight years, Yankton County Historical Society board member and artifact collector Larry Ness carried a photograph of the bag, and asked other collectors if they’d seen it. He found it in New York in 2003, and after some legal maneuvering he was able to bring the pipe bag home to the Yankton museum, where it is once again on display.

The Thoen Stone, located at the Adams Museum in Deadwood, is another prized museum piece with an interesting story. The stone is an 8 1/2 by 10 inch scrap of sandstone, purportedly found near Spearfish in 1887 by Louis Thoen. Inscribed on both sides is a message that is still the subject of controversy. The rough script describes how a band of seven men found”all the gold we could carry” in the northern Black Hills, and then were killed by Indian warriors — all except for the writer, Ezra Kind.

Kind supposedly wrote that he was out of food,”without a gun and hiding for his life.” The inscription is dated 1834, 40 years before the Custer expedition into the Hills. The fate of Mr. Kind is unknown, as is the validity of the stone itself.

Another famous stone can be found at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre — and its validity is certain. In 1742, Pierre Gaultier de la Verendrye sent his sons from Hudson Bay in Canada to find a water route to China. On foot and horseback, Louis-Joseph and Francois trekked west for over a year — until their Indian guides refused to go farther. The French-Canadians did not find a route to the sea, but they were among the first Europeans to see the Dakota plains. Camping with Indians along the Missouri on March 30, 1743, they buried a lead plate on a hilltop near the mouth of the Bad River to commemorate their journey. Three teenagers found the Verendryes’ partially-exposed lead plate in February of 1913. The artifact helped historians map the Verendryes’ route in their search for the Pacific.

Some of other amazing discoveries we found at local museums include paintings, like the Harvey Dunn originals at Brookings’ South Dakota Art Museum, sculptures like Borglum’s Statue of Lincoln at Keystone’s Borglum Historical Center and more Native American treasures like parfleche containers at Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain. Sometimes the museum building itself is a treasure, like the Pettigrew House in Sioux Falls or Adams Museum and House in Deadwood.

Ranchers will be nostalgic about Archer Gilfillan’s sheepherder wagon at the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell. The early-day”mobile home,” a double floored and heated covered wagon, came to the museum 50 years ago. Gilfillan, a popular Harding County writer and speaker, was born in White Earth, Minn. in 1886, the son of an Episcopal missionary to the Ojibway Indians. Gilfillan studied Latin and Greek in prestigious universities and traveled in Europe. He returned to the West to homestead in Harding County. That venture failed and he worked for other ranchers, keeping a journal of the people and events he encountered. He gave a speech about sheep, coyote and human behavior at a wool growers’ convention at Helena, Mont., in 1924 called”Secret Sorrows of a Sheepherder,” and it was so well received he compiled his stories into a book, Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range.

Every South Dakota museum, large and small, has treasures awaiting us. What better time to discover them than on a cold winter’s day?

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Deadwood Dick vs the Whitewood Skunk

By Ruth McPherson

He never sat with his back to a door, that grim old-timer who claimed to be the hero of the Deadwood Dick dime novels. He assumed the stance of an alert shotgun guard at all times, in spite of the fact that no stagecoach robber had been observed in our little town for many a decade.

His weather-beaten face was flecked with powder burns and his piercing, squinched eyes were ever on the lookout for trouble. He seemed to stand tall, due to his lean build, and the peaked crown of his black Stetson added to the deception. His name was Richard Clarke, but he preferred to be called Deadwood Dick, and most of the townspeople humored him.

Dick lived in obscurity for a number of years and his oft-told tales of vanquished Indians and outwitted holdup men were discounted by local listeners. His prosaic job as a railroad section hand did much to diminish belief in his stories of previous adventures. Some of his neighbors regarded him as a pathetic and deluded old man.

It was in 1927, when he was in his early seventies, that Deadwood Dick was born again. Bert Bell, an energetic and imaginative press agent for Deadwood’s Days of 76, acted as midwife in the rebirth of the fictional hero, and Dick Clarke became the character that he had impersonated for many years. Dick was given a buckskin suit, the use of a cabin in Pine Crest Park for his lifetime, a place of honor in every parade, and he was lionized with proper respect by the cult buffs of the Pioneer.

Robert Casey, in his book, The Black Hills, said that some of Dick’s disbelievers claimed he “didn’t know which end of the gun to hold away from him when he pulled the trigger.” Our family could prove this was not the case.

It was our privilege, when we moved to Whitewood in 1920, to live in the house next door to Deadwood Dick. Before his sudden rise to fame removed him from our town, we considered him a satisfactory neighbor, except for one alarming trait. He was much too quick on the trigger of his trusty rifle. The fact that the index finger on his right hand was missing did not slow his fast draw.

I was a senior in high school when I experienced the humbling result of Deadwood Dick’s fast draw. Mother had mentioned on one of Dick’s visits that a skunk had taken up residence under our screened porch. Dick assured her that he knew just how to take care of the problem.

Why he chose 8:30 the following morning to exterminate the animal, I shall never know, but just as I was leaving for school, a shot shattered the early morning stillness and my life was changed for many weeks thereafter. The skunk returned Dick’s fire with an odor that contaminated our neighborhood for blocks.

By the time I reached the Lemaster home, I knew that I would not be welcome in class, and I decided upon what I foolishly considered a quick fix. I had tied a 25-cent piece in my handkerchief for some notebook paper, so I dashed down to Gustin’s Drug Store for a quarter’s worth of perfume. Earl, in his haste to get rid of me, handed me a half pint of the cheapest, smelliest kind in stock, and held the door open for my departure.

I drenched myself with the malodorous liquid, and in my rush to reach class on time, I failed to realize the full horror of combining the essence of skunk with the overpowering scent of magnolia and musk. I tried to slip into the room without being noticed, but my odor preceded me and as I came through the door, all eyes in class were upon me. I raced to my seat amidst a concert of gagging and retching sounds, and Lorene Jay, who sat in front of me, promptly fainted. Professor Munson quickly appraised the situation and suggested that I leave the room immediately.

As I slunk away, totally disgraced, I noticed that Lorene had returned to consciousness, with many solicitous classmates in attendance. Tearfully, I stumbled home with anger eventually replacing my humiliation. I deplored the fact that no early-day combatants had sent a well-placed bullet or arrow to the heart of our hero, Deadwood Dick, and I plotted ways that I might accomplish the job they had left undone.

At home, I found my exasperated mother trying to air out the house that smelled worse even than I, before I added the putrid perfume. The unfortunate skunk left his imprint on our household for several weeks, but Deadwood Dick has lingered in my memory as he appeared that ill-fated morning so many years ago. Only my futile anger has faded, dissolved by laughter and nostalgia for those “good old days.”

Editor’s Note: Ruth McPherson, a Black Hills native who lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, wrote this true tale of Deadwood Dick’s exploits for our July/August 1991 issue.

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Remembering Calamity

By Laura Johnson

Calamity Jane’s life and loves achieved mythic status long ago. It’s rare to catch a glimpse of the woman behind the legend, but thanks to the a recent post at the South Dakota Oral History Center blog, we can now hear stories from two men who knew her. George Leeman first met the legendary Black Hills lady when he was just a boy. Pers Russell, the son of Gordon Party member Thomas H. Russell, knew Martha Jane Cannary from his days of bartending at the Bodega Bar. But they never forgot their encounters with one of Deadwood’s wildest citizens, and they shared those memories and other tales from the early days of the Black Hills in 1956 with J. Leonard Jennewein, a history and English professor at Dakota Wesleyan University.

Excerpts from those interviews are available at the South Dakota Oral History Center’s blog. Click here to listen, contact the Oral History Center to purchase copies of the full interviews with Leeman and Russell, or search the center’s database to find more South Dakota historical tidbits.