From movies watched and stories read, Deadwood has always had an allure.

It was here, 152 years ago, that the discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills set off one of the great gold rushes in America. In 1876, miners moved into the northern Black Hills. That’s where they came across a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold and Deadwood was born.
Practically overnight, the tiny gold camp boomed into a town that played by its own rules that attracted outlaws, gamblers and gunslingers along with the gold seekers. Wild Bill Hickok was one of those men who came looking for fortune.

Wild Bill is probably the most famous Deadwood resident, even though he was only in town a few short weeks.  James Butler Hickok arrived in Deadwood, along with Colorado Charlie Utter and Calamity Jane, in July of 1876.  He was a well-known gambler and gunslinger, participating in many shootouts before coming to Deadwood. He was killed on August 2, 1876 when Jack McCall shot him from behind while playing poker. When he died, Wild Bill was holding a pair of aces and eights, that series of cards became known to poker players all around the world as the “Dead Man’s Hand."

Poor Calamity Jane. Born Martha Canary in 1856 and orphaned 9 years later, Calamity Jane survived by any means possible, meaning she followed railroad, military, and gold camps across Wyoming Territory.  She was on the Newton-Jenny Expedition in 1875 and General Crook’s expedition of 1876.  Calamity Jane would dress in soldier’s uniforms to avoid detection.  She joined the Wagon Train that included Wild Bill and Charlie Utter in Fort Laramie, WY.  Jane was loud, profane, and often drunk – she was also widely known.  She worked hard to fit into a man’s world, and made her living in a variety of ways by cooking, cleaning, waitressing, dance hall girl, and as a prostitute, but she had a soft side – she tended to the sick (smallpox epidemic).

After spending our morning at the local laundromat, we left Gillette, WY with our destination being our Nation's first National Monument, Devils Tower.

Devils Tower (also known as Matȟó Thípila or Bear Lodge) is a laccolithic butte, composed of igneous rock in northeastern Wyoming. It rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 ft from summit to base. The summit is 5,112 ft above sea level. When you come around the corner and see it, it's pretty breathtaking.
Devils Tower National Monument was the first United States national monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt (I'll be talking more about him in a few days).

This 'selfie stand' was a first. While I carry a tripod everywhere I go, this was such a great idea we had to try it out.
The stand works great at capturing the Tower and us.


Do you see the people in the cracks? As of 1994, climbing Devils Tower had increased in popularity. About 1.3% of the monument's 400,000 annual visitors climbed Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques. The first known ascent, by any method, occurred on July 4, 1893, and is credited to William Rogers and Willard Ripley, local ranchers in the area. They completed this first ascent after constructing a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face.
At the base of Devils Tower, colorful cloth bundles and ribbons tied to tree branches are sacred prayer offerings left by Indigenous people who regard the site as a deep spiritual sanctuary.
Believers tie these cloths to trees so that the wind carries their prayers upward into the spiritual realm.
To a person of a certain age, this tower might look familiar. The 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the formation as a plot element and as the location of its climactic scenes. The film's popularity resulted in a large increase in visitors to the monument and climbers of it. It makes me want to watch the movie again.
Our last stop before leaving the Park was at Prairie Dog Town. Located near the Belle Fourche River, this town spans 40 acres and is home to over 600 residents. Prairie dogs are not only cute, they are also a keystone species vital to the park’s ecosystem. I could have watch them all day but we were off to Spearfish, South Dakota for the night.


After dinner and explore of its historic downtown, we settled into our home for the night, Spearfish City Campground.
I had just mentioned to Steve that I wanted for visit a fish hatchery. How fun that one was right next to our campground. Established in 1896, D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery and Archives, formerly Spearfish National Fish Hatchery, is one of the oldest operating hatcheries in the country dedicated to fish culture and resource management.

And why the need for such a place? In the late 1860s, it was clear that fishers were wiping out salmon and American shad on the East Coast. The feds had to do something. Congress, with what in retrospect seems a strange confidence, charged the new Commission of Fish and Fisheries with the task of “supplementing declining native stocks of coastal and lake food fish through fish propagation."

The need for fish became very important. During World War I, governments launched "Eat More Fish" campaigns to conserve beef, pork, and lamb for troops fighting on the front lines. Agencies like the U.S. Food Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries urged citizens to replace meat with wild-caught seafood, reminding the public that fish “feed themselves” and save products of the land. At the time, meat indicated wealth while fish was often viewed as low-status (déclassé). Advocate Evelene Spencer traveled across the United States to teach citizens how to prepare and cook alternative seafood options like carp, bass, and trout.