Day 5 History & Nature

'Tis the season of shimmering, golden aspens. Interspersed with pine they cover the hills for a fantasy of color. We planned to hike a long difficult hike on a forest service trail. It was a hot day and we wore our sandals for the 45 minute drive to the trail head. We packed a lunch, the camera, water, hats, etc. and I forgot my hiking shoes. End of hike. But it was a long drive over a gravel road through the forest and it was beautiful. We hope to include a photo in this post and fix the messy, disordered presentation of yesterday's post.



Deadwood is American history. The gold rush brought many characters to SD. We visited many of them at the Mt. Moriah Cemetery including Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, the madames, and the businessmen, etc. The stones are mostly new as the cemetery had to be moved up the hill as the town grew. But the stones record the people and dates of birth & death. I noticed that many women died in their twenties and thirties and men rarely lived beyond forty or fifty. Families lost many children.





The town has a few old buildings but fires in the late 1800s took everything original. Deadwood was quite down on its luck until gambling was legalized here. Everything is reconstructed. Now everything, every shop, restaurant, hotel, hole-in-the-wall has a casino. There was a big federal infusion of money to save the area and judging from the traffic during this off season it's helped.



We visited the Adams Museum in Deadwood. It was built by W.E. Adams in the 1930's with $75,000  of his money to record the history and interpret the culture of the Black Hills. Adams built a sturdy stone building downtown and the displays include pioneer, mining, Lakota artifacts as well as Wild Bills's gun collection. It was also the coolest (air conditioned) place in town.

Though slightly disappointed not to have our hike, I am not sure I would have made it for 7.5 miles in this heat.