Deadwood prepares for summer tourists

The wild and woolly days of Deadwood’s golden past not only come to life in the HBO series named for the place, but have kindled intense interest in this historic town that once was home to Wild Bill Hickok and other colorful characters. “Deadwood,” which just completed its first 12 episodes on HBO but is due back for a second season, drew a huge nationwide following since its March 21 debut. The show also is luring more people to Deadwood and may create an economic bonanza in the Black Hills as the summer tourist season begins.

“I think it’s really going to put Deadwood on the map,” said Tom Rensch, general manager of the Silverado, which bills itself as Deadwood’s largest casino.

Much of the research for the show, which focuses on the tawdry atmosphere of a hastily built mining camp in 1876, was done at the local Adams Museum. Mary Kopco, museum director, said its Web site typically gets about 30,000 visits a month but had 6 million hits in April.

The show depicts Deadwood shortly after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. For two years, the mining camp was nearly lawless.

HBO’s “Deadwood” has fascinated people with its mix of fictional and factual events from that era, Kopco said.

“It’s really turned people on to history in a way that I haven’t seen for a long time,” she said. “It’s amazing how HBO has captured the essence of old Deadwood.”

The state Tourism Office has been flooded in recent weeks with inquiries about Deadwood, said Nicole Nordbye, the agency’s communications coordinator.

“Internet traffic that’s being generated by that show to any Web site regarding tourism in South Dakota is just phenomenal,” she said.

“We’re also getting many calls from people who are interested in the history of Deadwood and plan to go there,” she said. “The show is piquing their interest, and as they start looking into the community they’re finding it’s full of rich lore and history.”

Viewers are not only visiting Deadwood on the Internet, but they are also coming in increasing numbers, confirmed George Milos, executive director of the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.

“It’s amazing how many people did not know that Deadwood even existed,” he said. “Many of those who contact us want to know if Deadwood is a real place.”

The business community hopes to benefit from HBO’s showcasing of the town’s rich history, Milos said.

As a mining town, modern Deadwood’s fortunes had been on a decades-long slide until South Dakota voters legalized gambling here and casinos opened their doors Nov. 1, 1989. Larry Eliason, state Gaming Commission director, said about $7.5 billion has been bet in Deadwood since gambling began.

About $150 million in gambling revenues have been used for restoration and preservation of Deadwood, ranking it as the largest such project ever undertaken in the United States.

This town of nearly 1,400 people has about 80 casinos, but competition elsewhere has increased in the last decade as legalized gambling spread across the nation.

The legendary Homestake Mine that supported the area economy closed in December 2001, ending 125 years of nearly continuous operations. Only limited gold mining remains, and tourism has become the economic underpinning of the Black Hills.

Deadwood’s unique history, which includes such flamboyant characters as Hickok and Calamity Jane, has long lured people who are interested in learning about the town’s past, Milos said.

The entire city of Deadwood was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

Popular with many tourists is the short jaunt up a mountain on one side of town to the local cemetery, where the gunslinger Hickok and Calamity Jane (whose real name was Martha Canary) are buried near each other.

The HBO series is scheduled to run for at least one more season, and its tourism spinoff will increasingly draw more people to Deadwood, Milos predicted.

“We realize that gaming is no longer unique, and we want people to know that when they come to Deadwood they can see the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial and the Badlands,” Milos said.

The series is one reason Esmeralda and Scott Weber of Houston were in Deadwood recently. They are big fans of the show.

“We were coming to the Black Hills anyway, but seeing the series made it more interesting for us,” Scott said as the couple had lunch near the spot where Hickok was murdered during a poker game on Aug. 2, 1876.

“We love the show,” Esmeralda added. “But the language did put us off a bit at first.”

Actors in “Deadwood” cuss up a blue streak in every episode, and it’s rare for many scenes to go by without someone being killed in its saloons and brothels.

Historical records indicate that prostitution in Deadwood sprang up in 1876 and operated almost continuously until finally shut down by authorities in 1980.

Many of the characters in the HBO show are based on identifiable people who lived in Deadwood during the gold rush and others are fictional.

Kopco said David Milch, who created the show, did extensive research about two years ago at the Deadwood library and Adams Museum. Many of the events portrayed in the series are based on various historical accounts, she said.

“They really did their homework,” Kopco said.

The show’s rough language has turned off a lot of older viewers, said Bill Walsh, owner of the Historic Franklin Hotel. He often asks his guests about the show and has found that it is most popular with those aged 24 to 48.

“It’s not attracting the wide audience that we’d hoped for, but it is attracting a solid audience and those people are coming to Deadwood,” Walsh said.

Jerry Bryant, research curator at the Adams Museum, said he has been working with the show’s writers in preparation for the second season.

“They’re asking all the right questions,” Bryant said, adding that he recently sent copies of 100 historic Deadwood photos to the show’s crew.

Tourists looking for the old Deadwood buildings used in the TV series won’t find them here because the show is filmed in California. Old Deadwood from the gold rush era burned down in 1879, and most buildings in town date to the early 1900s.

However, a facade to show tourists what the old buildings looked like is being erected in Deadwood’s casino district.