July 14, 2006

July 14, 2006

In the morning we make the short drive into Deadwood. Deadwood is a gold rush town that didn’t die like others did because the gold in this area lasted for some 125 years. Deadwood gained some infamous notoriety when Hollywood made legends out of local characters Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Today Deadwood is a casino town with a western motif. Despite that fact we make a pilgrimage up to see the gravesites of Jane and Bill on the steep hill above town on foot. It looks like a modern cemetery with a lot of old dates. We have lunch at a local saloon. Afterwards we drive up the hill to the sister town of Lead where the gold source was found. Lead is the primary location of the recently closed Homestake Mine. More gold was recovered here than anywhere else in the world. In the center of town is a half-mile wide open pit where the gold was once strip-mined.

We now exit the Black Hills and South Dakota by taking the scenic Spearfish Canyon road. It is a beautiful canyon drive and was the site of the Sioux winter camp in the film, Dances with Wolves. It is a long downhill ride that is interrupted by more road construction. Like Chicago they seem to have only two seasons here, winter and construction.

As we head west into Wyoming, we head back into ranch country. It seems the Black Hills is a now small but very ancient mountain range oasis in the middle of the prairie. Our next stop is Sundance, Wyoming, famous for the Sundance Kid and the gateway to the Devils Tower Monument, 30 miles north. There is a large wildfire just west of the Tower that has closed some of the roads leading to it. We stop at a private campground in Sundance for the night and hope the roads will be open in the morning.