Deadwood

Custer's Blackhills expedition

1874



"Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and announced the discovery of gold on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota. Custer's announcement triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Among the towns that immediately grew up was Deadwood, South Dakota, notorious for lawlessness."

From Wikipedia

The Gem Variety Theater and Dance Hall in Deadwood Dakota

Calamity Jane

These photographs were taken in 1885 of Calamity Jane. They are from L.R. Freeman's book 'Down the Yellowstone' which was written in 1922.

Born Martha Jane Cannary Burke in about 1856, in Missouri she was a famous wild west figure -  a frontierswoman, a professional scout.
Martha Jane was the eldest of six children and had to look after them when both her mother and father died. The siblings all travelled by wagon and then Union Pacific Railroad to live in Wyoming where Jane worked as a cook, dishwasher, waitress, ran a dance-hall, ox team driver, prostitute and scout for General Custer. She became a good rifle shooter and horse rider. She often dressed as a man to enable her to do jobs considered only suitable for men and also swore and chewed tobacco. 

When she first met Wild Bill Hickok she was travelling by wagon train to Deadwood, Dakota and lived there from 1876 to 1881 sometimes working as a prostitute or a dancer. It was here that she endeared herself to the people and the town by nursing many of the sick during a smallpox epidemic of 1878.

In 1893, Calamity Jane started to appear in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show as a horse rider and a trick shooter but was fired due to her drinking. She was an alcoholic an addiction that was seen in her younger years.

In 1901 Calamity Jane started selling her small autobiography "Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane"
She died on August 1, 1903 and was buried in Mount Moriah Cemetary overlooking the city of Deadwood, next to Wild Bill Hickok.

Frontier Lawman of the Wild West

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp 1848 – 1929

Wyatt Earp had many occupations in his 80 years. He started as a farmer, of his families 80 acre farm, at 13 years of age when all the other men folk joined the army.

He drove a cargo wagon with a team of horses, he bought and sold real estate including saloons, he was listed as a gambler in the San Diego City Directory in 1887. In 1869 he was appointed local constable at  Lamar, Missouri.  He was a city marshall, or police officer, in Wichita from 1871 to 1876, and later various other frontier towns such as Deadwood.

He is best remembered for the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with two of his brothers,Virgil and Morgan, and his friend Doc Holliday. The shootout resulted in Wyatt Earp being thought of as one of the best and toughest gunmen of the times.

 

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