Deadwood’s Days of ’76. The Wild West Show as Community Celebration
Kevin Britz
South Dakota History, volume 40 number 1, 2010
South Dakota History is the quarterly journal published by the South Dakota State Historical Society. Membership in the South Dakota State Historical Society includes a subscription to the journal. Members support the Society's important mission of interpreting, preserving and transmitting the unique heritage of South Dakota. Learn more here: https://history.sd.gov/Membership.aspx. Download PDFs of articles from the first 43 years and obtain recent issues of South Dakota History at sdhspress.com/journal.
Like many western towns, Deadwood, South Dakota, keeps the memory of its early frontier days alive with an annual community celebration. For a few days each July, the famous Black Hills town—whose reputation as a western Sodom once rivaled that of Tombstone and Dodge City—stages a parade featuring horseback riders bedecked in western garb accompanied by a procession of wagons and floats to commemorate its beginnings as a wide-open frontier boomtown. Known as the “Days of ’76,” the celebration culminates in a nationally recognized professional rodeo. Although it has changed over the years, the event still serves its original purpose: to confirm Deadwood’s place as a “real” western town. Today, most visitors who step out of the town’s plentiful gambling establishments to watch the parade or attend the rodeo are unwitting witnesses to a significant cultural artifact, a remnant of the Wild West show made famous by William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody, spiced up with influences of the “blood and thunder” dime novel. Nordo most spectators realize that the first Days of ’76 celebration was at times a controversial affair involving strong opinions about how Deadwood should best deal with its notorious past.
As many historians have pointed out, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and similar shows played a critical role in shaping both American and European images of the West. Begun in the 1880s, such shows remained a popular form of amusement for approximately three decades until declining around World War I due to the rise of films. While Cody’s show provided theatrical, wholesome entertainment that celebrated a pioneering past, the dime novels of the late nineteenth century lacked any such pretense and offered up instead images of ramshackle, violence-ridden towns, political and economic corruption, saloons, gambling, and prostitution. These cheap publications produced for mass audiences played a key role in creating a version of the West in which a larger-than-life hero, acting in the name of justice or morality, vanquished the forces of evil. Like Wild West shows, dime novels adopted a mantle of authenticity by employing fictionalized real-life characters such as Jesse James or Billy the Kid or by placing characters in real settings such as Deadwood or Tombstone.
This combination of images and stories of the West played a key role when Deadwood promoters began to look at ways to address the sagging fortunes of their town in 1924. Removed by two generations from the actual frontier experience, civic boosters in “Roaring Twenties” Deadwood believed that in order for their community to survive the bust that followed its gold-mining boom, they needed to embrace the growing industry of tourism and officially promote Deadwood’s “Wild West” reputation. To achieve this goal, they sought to retool their civic identity to match the desires of the new type of cash-carrying visitors who brought along their own expectations of what a famous western town should be. This action, as it became manifested in the first Days of ’76 celebration, marked a shift in the way the town perceived its history.
Older residents of Deadwood, as in many other western communities, viewed their history as the story of stalwart pioneers who overcame the challenges of the wilderness and advanced civilization. In the process, these frontiersmen and women honed the personal values of hardiness, determination, individualism, ingenuity, and sheer hard work. To ensure that Deadwood’s role in the pioneer epic would be passed on to future generations, a number of prominent citizens organized the Society of Black Hills Pioneers in 1889. This group and early civic boosters consciously worked to distance the town from its lurid reputation and promote it as modern, pious, and orderly. Thus, when the new generation of promoters proposed to celebrate Deadwood’s rowdy past, many citizens grew concerned.
Deadwood had sprouted overnight following the discovery of gold in the northern Black Hills late in 1875. Gold seekers thronged into the new mining camp in what was commonly referred to as an “excitement.” Merchants, teamsters, assayers, lawyers, bankers, saloon keepers, gamblers, and prostitutes arrived in such great numbers that the town of Deadwood was officially organized in April 1876. By autumn, it boasted 173 businesses, a newspaper, churches, and two small schools. At its peak in 1876, the town may have had a population as high as ten thousand.
The excitement surrounding the gold rush quickly drew journalists and writers eager to chronicle events in the new boomtown. Writers portrayed Deadwood as a frontier Sodom locked firmly in the clutches of vice, violence, and immorality. The New York Times called it “a disorderly, sinful, sickly city” where “gambling-hells [stay] open all day long” and “the few prey upon the many.” The newspaper went on to describe the gold camp as a place where whiskey ran freely and lawmen were little different from amblers. Leander P. Richardson, writing for Scribner’s Monthly, had a similar impression. “I never in my life saw so many hardened and brutal-looking men together,” Richardson reported, adding that “every alternate house was a gambling saloon.”
The town’s growing reputation for violence made one reporter for a Cheyenne, Wyoming, newspaper suggest that its name be changed from “Deadwood” to “Deadman." As if to corroborate such testimony, the famous gunman and dime-novel character James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickok was assassinated in a Deadwood saloon in August 1876. His grave in the local cemetery quickly became the town’s premier attraction, a fact not lost on later civic boosters.
Hickok’s timely death, along with the lurid articles written about the town, gave rise to fictional depictions from the pen of dime novelist Edward L. Wheeler. In October 1877, a few months after the New York Times published its colorful description, he introduced readers to Deadwood Dick, a character who went on to become one of the most popular dime-novel heroes of all time. Wheeler’s description of Deadwood closely paralleled the New York Times story. “Saloons, dance-houses, and gambling-dens keep open all night,” wrote the novelist. “Fighting, shooting, stabbing and hideous swearing are some of the features of the night; singing, drinking, dancing and gambling are others.” Deadwood Dick was soon joined by a fictionalized version of the real-life “Calamity Jane,” or Martha Canary, another famous westerner associated with Deadwood and the Black Hills. For the next thirty years, the two characters roamed the Black Hills and the West in a perpetual quest to rid the frontier of corruption and establish justice. In the minds of Wheeler’s readers, Deadwood became the archetype of the vice-ridden frontier town.
Such depictions were the stuff of popular fiction but a horror to Deadwood’s turn-of-the-century business community. Who, they reasoned, would invest in a crime-riddled, ramshackle town? To counter these unsavory images, boosters portrayed the community as progressive and law-abiding. Promotional literature showed a modern city with sturdy architecture, prosperous businesses, homes, banks, vibrant industry, plenty of churches and schools, and an impressive courthouse and post office. In fact, boosters argued that at no time “could Deadwood ever be classed as a ‘gross town.’” They argued that “it has ever been singularly free from the bad element that has made other western and frontier towns notorious” and laid the blame for its reputation on the fiction of “blood and thunder writers.”11 For those residents who had arrived in the 1870s, the real story of the town was that of how they as pioneers had built a civilization out of a wilderness. The notion of Deadwood celebrating its early moment of civic disorder, complete with prostitution, gambling, and drunkenness, was unthinkable to turn-of-the century town boosters.
The idea of officially capitalizing on the town’s raucous image was ultimately driven by economics. By the 1890s, Deadwood’s glorious mining days had faded as readily accessible sources of gold became exhausted. Mining activity revived temporarily between 1899 and 1917, when the implementation of new ore-treatment methods allowed tailings and poor grades of ore to be processed. Between 1894 and 1903, the number of men employed in mining operations in the Black Hills nearly tripled, growing from 1,281 to 3,500. The economic surge was short-lived, however. The high costs of mining deep ore bodies gradually shut down many mining operations in the northern Black Hills. At the end of World War I, the Homestake Mining Company in Lead was the only major mine in the area to remain in full production.
As Deadwood’s mining fortunes faded, so did its role as a commercial service center. Despite the attempts of promoters to portray it as a morally upstanding and law-abiding town, Deadwood in 1909 had a saloon for every 250 residents and an impressive number of brothels. The presence of widespread alcohol guzzling and prostitution caused Edward L. Senn, the moralistic new editor and publisher of the Deadwood Telegram, to launch a public campaign against saloons, gambling and dance halls, and houses of ill repute. Senn’s moral onslaught met stiff local resistance but was not entirely for naught. In 1917, Deadwood’s saloons and gambling houses closed down under statewide prohibition, and President Calvin Coolidge later appointed the crusading publisher to serve as the prohibition officer for South Dakota. When added to the effects of the mining industry downturn, the saloon closings were devastating; the population of the town plummeted from thirty-six hundred in 1910 to twenty-four hundred in 1920.
Deadwood’s star continued to fade as it was gradually eclipsed by Rapid City, the new regional service leader. Strategically positioned between the mining and logging towns of the Black Hills and the agriculture-based communities of the surrounding plains, Rapid City began to develop a trucking industry and grew to become the region’s leading distribution center. It also assumed the role of gatekeeper for the growing number of tourists to the Black Hills. Many Deadwood residents recognized what Edward Senn stated openly in 1924: “It is useless to try to hide what all the world knows—that Deadwood has been steadily retrograding in population and business importance since the flush days following the discovery of gold here. It was an inevitable result of the passing of the boom which brought in thousands of fortune hunters.”15 The town’s decline was apparent to outside observers, as well. One writer for American Mercury called Deadwood a “backwash” that was “not fully exposed to civilizing influences until the motor tourist age.” Its dispirited population, he added, was “too poor, shabby and broken-spirited to catch up.” The writer went on to depict Deadwood residents as wandering aimlessly past “neglected store fronts” in “a tableau of premature architectural senility.
By the 1920s, it had become clear to civic leaders that the solution to Deadwood’s economic woes lay in capitalizing on the growing regional tourism industry. For more than twenty years, railroads and tourist associations had actively promoted the Black Hills for their natural beauty and outdoor recreation opportunities. If a way could be found to make deadwood a tourist destination, promoters reasoned, business could be rekindled, new investment attracted, and prosperity revived. Interest in local tourism was not a new phenomenon. Deadwood residents had long been aware that the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane in Mount Moriah Cemetery were popular visitor attractions. The question of what direction the community should take in drawing tourists remained an item of discussion within the Deadwood Business Men’s Club (the forerunner of the local chamber of commerce) and the Society of Black Hills Pioneers for years. In their meetings, society members debated how best to capitalize on their history: Should they create a museum, emphasize historic sites, or build monuments?
It was a decision in the rival town of Lead in 1923 and the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of Deadwood’s founding that finally sparked action. In 1921, the two cities had agreed to take turns sponsoring annual Fourth of July festivities and assisting the host town. Lead broke this gentleman’s agreement two years later, announcing that it would hold its own celebration to be organized by the Homestake Post of the American Legion. In return, the Deadwood Business Men’s Club proclaimed that it, too, would take a “free hand” the following year but would have to forgo celebrating in 1923 because funds had already been committed elsewhere. Lead’s decision left Deadwood the only city in the Black Hills without a major tourist event or attraction. Belle Fourche had the Tri-State Roundup; Rapid City, an Alfalfa Palace celebration; and Spearfish, its American Legion picnic. Sturgis hosted automobile races, and Custer sponsored Gold Discovery Day. Each of these celebrations focused on a historic event, economic activity, or other special aspect of the community. What made Deadwood unique among other Black Hills towns, promoters reasoned, was its frontier moment—the brief period of disorder made famous first in dime novels and, later, in Western movies. The growing realization that its early past could be turned into a distinctive celebration spurred the Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times to ask, “Why not [give] Deadwood its ‘DAYS OF ’76’ Home-Coming celebration?”
The developers of this new marketing idea in the spring of 1924 were local businessmen George Baldwin and Fred Gramlich, both prominent members of the Deadwood Business Men’s Club. They intended to capitalize on the town’s Wild West reputation to inaugurate what they called “one of the greatest events in the history of the Hills.” Such an event, the promoters hoped, would serve as an advertisement to attract visitors and, presumably, their spending power, to Deadwood. A special committee was formed within the club to plan and stage a celebration “true to the days of ’76, when the town and the Hills were in their infancy, and ‘dear, delightful, devilish Deadwood’ was an alliteration every adjective of which was deserved.” The businessmen’s plan called for depicting “true to life the characters who were noted during the days of ’76, to reproduce exactly, or as nearly as possible, the scenes which made the city picturesque during those days.” The Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times backed the effort, noting the opportunity it presented to raise sagging civic morale: “The spirit of the occasion is being transfused into the blood of our citizenry and we confidently predict that Deadwood’s well known reputation as a host will have new wind in its sails after this initial reenaction of the ‘Days of ’76.’
The idea of presenting the “devilish” side of early Deadwood did not meet with universal enthusiasm. Opposition arose from community members who believed that celebrating the unsavory aspects of the town’s past—its “gambling hells,” dance halls, and saloons—betrayed its pioneering virtues and true history. Such an event, they feared, would send the wrong message and further damage Deadwood’s tarnished reputation. Predictably, many prominent citizens, including the president of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, were against the proposal.
The loudest voice of public concern came from Edward Senn, whose Deadwood Telegram spoke out on behalf of “some who have regard primarily for the moral influence of such affairs.” He openly expressed fear that the celebration would be “largely a reproduction of the underworld life of Deadwood in ’76 with its saloons, gambling and other forms of vices and carousal.” Such activities would loosen the restraints of prohibition and cause Deadwood to revert to the “spirit of revelry and debauchery which formerly held too prominent a place.” Senn warned that such a return would “not be tolerated by the people of this city who place its moral welfare above financial and entertainment considerations.” Instead, the publisher urged that the program take on an educational emphasis, affirming the pioneer virtues of the area’s settlers by focusing on the “legitimate activities” of the frontier rather than “on the redlight, night life of the gold camps.” Senn went on to offer several possibilities, including the replication of a gold camp in miniature, portrayals of historic characters, and reenactments of stage holdups and incidents such as the killing of Wild Bill Hickok as long as they were “faithfully reproduced in a way that would be thrilling, and instructive.”
To assuage Senn’s concerns and, at the same time, determine the extent of public support for a celebration, organizers canvassed store owners, city leaders, and local organizations. In addition, the Deadwood Business Men’s Club formed an executive committee composed of representatives of civic groups and business interests, headed by Fred Gramlich and managed by Earl Morford, publisher of the Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times. Senn’s rival agreed to assume the role only after members assured him of general community support. Despite lingering concerns over the celebration’s moral tone, planning for the Days of ’76 proceeded.
None of the organizers had ever created an event of such magnitude, but as community expectations grew, planners understood that they had to come up with something new and dramatic. The celebration would have to both tantalize visitors who expected a “Wild West” experience that matched popular images and placate those community members who desired a commemoration of the pioneers’ hard work and civic progress. The solution to the dilemma gradually became clear: use the town’s popular reputation to lure visitors in and then create a celebration based on the standard conventions of the Wild West show.
Looking to Wild West shows for inspiration was natural for Days of ’76 organizers. Beginning in 1883, “Bill shows,” as they were popularly called in reference to Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, offered audiences a blend of circus, authenticity, dime-novel plots, and dramatic visual imagery that deeply fixed conventional perceptions of the Wild West in society. Cody structured his Wild West show to give patrons a general frontier scenario punctuated with enactments of stage holdups, famous battles, and gunfights between established heroes and villains. To lend authenticity to the tableau, shows included live buffalo, buckskin-clad actors, American Indians wearing traditional clothing, wagons, buggies, horses, and large numbers of guns. Added realism came with the enlistment of well-known westerners such as Cody, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Buck Taylor. At its peak between 1894 and 1898, Cody’s show was so massive that it employed 467 people, required fifty-two train cars, and covered thirty acres when it played in New York City. The success of Cody’s Wild West fostered rivals such as Pawnee Bill, the 101 Ranch, and Cummins’s Indian Congress. A major dramatic pageant called the “Drama of Civilization” by Steele McKay, a well-known playwright and actor, was even staged in Madison Square Garden complete with a prairie fire, cattle stampede, cyclone machine, and an enormous movable cyclorama as a backdrop.
Although each show had its own unique features, certain offerings were standard. They included an introductory parade showcasing animals and participants; the presence of American Indians, always in full regalia and often with encampments; theatrical reenactments of events such as stage robberies, wagon-train attacks, and battles; demonstrations of western skills like marksmanship, horse racing, and rodeo activities such as exhibition riding, bull and bronco riding, roping, and fancy lariat tricks; celebrity heroes such as those previously mentioned; and, most importantly, the doctrine of authenticity. For Cody, all details and aspects of the show had to be realistic, for he considered the program to be an educational testament to America’s defining moment—its frontier beginnings. The nation was exceptional, Cody believed, because of the successful conquest of the wilderness as symbolized by buckskin, guns, horses, and “wild” Indians. In whole or in part, these Wild West show conventions remain important characteristics that help define the Old West in popular culture.
The organizers of Deadwood’s Days of ’76 came of age during the era of Wild West shows, dime novels, and Western movies. They soon realized that the conventions that worked so well for Cody’s outdoor theater might also work for the celebration they envisioned. At the same time, promoters knew they could go a step further when it came to authenticity. Deadwood, after all, was a real place with a reputation established and publicized in dime novels. It was also the last resting place of legendary western figures. This claim to legitimacy was further enhanced with sites, relics, living (though aging) pioneers, and a picturesque Black Hills setting. For Deadwood boosters, the town’s fame unmistakably proved its significance in the history of the United States and, especially, the West.
As plans for the celebration unfolded, the Days of ’76 became a community version of a “Bill show.” Organizers included many of the standard features familiar to Wild West show audiences: a long introductory parade, depictions of historic events and famous characters, contemporary celebrities, demonstrations of western skills, and a heavy emphasis on authentic elements such as wagons, period clothing, horses, and local Lakota Indians. Like a Wild West show, the Days of ’76 was designed to entertain visitors with images and activities that matched their perceptions of a real Old West experience. The main difference lay in the distinctive community flavor provided by parade floats and activities sponsored by local businesses and organizations—a gesture on the part of organizers to include examples of civic progress and calm critics of the Wild West theme.
Organizers of the Days of ’76 understood that its success rested on widespread community involvement. One method promoters used in building support for the effort was to link the commemoration with civic pride, which Earl Morford did successfully as publisher of the Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times.
“Community cooperation and the instilling of the spirit of the occasion into every person in the city is the paramount necessity for the staging of this event,” he wrote, “and should that be lacking, plans might just as well be abandoned at the outset.” Morford made clear his expectation that “every resident of the city will be a member of the committee on cooperation and will lend assistance to those in charge.”32 Because volunteer groups constituted the strongest source of support, the executive committee organized public meetings to provide information, assign tasks, and foster enthusiasm. The committee made a point of enlisting women and encouraged the members of all girls’ and women’s groups in town to participate. As further incentive, the community was reminded of the celebration’s economic potential. “Merchants and others are beginning to realize the great advertising possibilities,” the Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times reported. “Where some had been backward, this has given place to an enthusiasm for the cause which means that every businessman and every citizen from now on is going to lend a helping hand.”
Another way of fostering involvement—and publicizing the event— was by encouraging men in the community to play the part of pioneers by growing beards. Through such participation, Deadwood men had the opportunity both to demonstrate their civic loyalty in public and to personify one aspect of the theme. Celebration organizers encouraged all males to stop shaving and join the “More Whiskers Club” so that they would resemble the burly goldseekers of 1876. When participation did not reach the desired level, organizers proclaimed all male citizens members in the new club and instructed them to proceed to selected businesses to pick up a membership card, pay a one-dollar fee, and swear to give up shaving until the Days of ’76 event was over. Club leaders offered prizes as incentives and threatened to convene a kangaroo court to fine those not sporting beards. “Be loyal to your town,” advised the Daily Pioneer-Times, equating membership with community pride. “Help make the More Whiskers Club a big success, which will in turn greatly assist in making the ‘Days of ’76’ celebration a success.” Within a few days, 150 men had enrolled. Deadwood newspapers carried regular reports on the progress of the whisker club and noted that numerous men were also wearing Days of ’76 hatbands, big western style hats, and placing banners on their car bumpers.
Transforming local men into hairy pioneers was just one part of a grand scheme to take Deadwood back to 1876. The executive committee planned to transform downtown into a period theater so that it, too, could serve as “a unique and attractive means of advertising.” To create a frontier atmosphere, the committee requested retailers to cover their storefronts with pine slabs obtained locally, making the buildings resemble rough-hewn log structures. In order to give business owners a better idea of what organizers envisioned, they were encouraged to look at an old photograph that showed a “wild and untamed” Deadwood consisting of “a jumble of log buildings with . . . fellows dressed in top boots, flannel shirts, heavy trousers, wide hats and six shooters.” To help facilitate installation of the false fronts, the executive committee oversaw the delivery of slabs. The Daily Pioneer-Times commented on the “attractive effect” and prodded reluctant store owners to participate, noting, “Those who have used them are glad they have done so.” As time for the celebration neared, the retailers’ enthusiasm grew. In addition to installing pine slabs, some merchants placed relics of bygone days in their windows and hung quaint signs recalling the frontier period. One grocery store displayed a replica of an 1876 sign that read “Gold Dust Taken Here for Groceries.” Each time a store owner “got into the spirit,” the newspaper used the example to spur others to action.
Even as the Deadwood Business Men’s Club won support for its Days of ’76, concern over the more controversial aspects of the celebration persisted. After learning that Morford and Gramlich planned to stage reenactments of dance halls and “gambling hells,” Telegram editor Senn expressed his fear that people with high moral standing in Deadwood were being “misled into giving support to something which they will have to regret and condemn.” He viewed the “degrading night life features” the committee planned to include as a serious blow to the city’s moral progress. “It has been difficult for Deadwood to live down the evil repute inherited from the days of ’76, even after it has been made as clean of cesspools, or vice as any city of its size in the state,” the editor pointed out. Senn demanded the questionable activities be dropped immediately, lest they “drive from, and keep away from the city, the class of citizens most needed.” As evidence, he noted that “some good people” were boycotting the celebration out of fear that Deadwood might return to its days of “letting down of the bars.”
To help soothe the publisher, members of the executive committee assured him that women participating in dances would not dress immodestly; that saloons would serve only soft drinks; and that gambling would involve nothing more than play money. Still, Senn argued that the Days of ’76 put Deadwood on public trial as to whether it was a town that would celebrate what was “instructive and commendable” or one that “glories in the evils of the early days.” Responsibility for protecting morality, he contended, rested with public officials and the celebration managers.
Most business owners appear not to have shared Senn’s worries, at least not publicly, and saw advantages in participating. The historic orientation of the event gave many enterprises a way to boost their respective industries by using the past to illustrate their own evolution. Evan W. Hall, the Lawrence County farm agent, offered Deadwood “hearty cooperation in every way possible” to create an exhibit on the history of farming in the county. Not to be outdone, the Homestake Mining Company announced sponsorship of an exhibit on old mining processes, which included a sluice, a “Long-Tom rocker,” a battery of ore-crushing stamps mounted on a truck, and an air drill. Each item was to be fully operative, and a small blast was planned.
In making every effort to authenticate their presentations and enhance the Old West flavor of the celebration, Deadwood leaders exploited the city’s proximity to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Fort Meade. Morford and members of the executive committee arranged for soldiers to arrive from Fort Meade near Sturgis “in heavy marching order, with all of the transportation and other impedimenta of a cavalry troop on the march.” Other committee members went to the Pine Ridge Agency and arranged for a large number of Indians to participate in the parade and perform traditional dances. According to the Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times, organizers believed the presence of the Lakotas would “be a feature which will not only attract great attention, but prove most interesting and novel to the visitors from outside the state.
Finally, Days of ’76 organizers put out a public call for objects to exhibit in the parade or in a “hall of relics” as a means of underscoring the authenticity of the event. Searching through their attics and sheds, Deadwood residents unearthed large numbers of curious and vintage objects, which they perceived to have intrinsic historical value. What emerged was a mix of items that reflected the promoters’ Wild West theme, as well as everyday objects and the just plain bizarre. Among those the Deadwood Telegram singled out for comment was a cane made from a broom handle that a penitentiary inmate had carved in the likenesses of Custer, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, and others; a copy of the town’s first newspaper; and a series of posters dating from 1877 that offered rewards for the capture of stage robbers and murderers. Drawing the most attention were two stagecoaches of the same vintage as those made famous in the Deadwood Dick sagas and in Cody’s Wild West show. J. S. McClintock, a long-time resident and livery operator, had sold the city a large coach the previous year and, shortly before the Days of ’76 celebration, donated a small Concord stage that had traveled the Bismarck to Black Hills route. As one of the principal icons of their past, the donation delighted organizers. “It is one of the pioneers of the west,” one reporter noted, “and its appearance in the parade, drawn by six prancing horses, loaded down with fearless and aggressive men of the old frontier, and supported by outriders, is surely going to attract attention.”
On 15 August 1924, thousands of curious and eager residents and tourists jockeyed for positions along the streets of Deadwood to glimpse the spectacle they had traveled by Model T or train to watch. In the spirit of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Deadwood launched the new official version of its history. At ten o’clock in the morning, after nervous planners marched down the length of the parade route making last-minute adjustments amidst the clacking of shod hooves and the creak of saddle leather, the long-awaited Days of ’76 celebration began.
The crowds of bystanders quickly got an eyeful of Deadwood’s legendary past. There were hairy men dressed as prospectors carrying picks and shovels, local cowboys wearing enormous hats and firing blank-filled six-shooters, and a cowboy marching band. Pioneer history was represented with ox-drawn covered wagons that rumbled down the pavement. A procession of cavalry from Fort Meade and Indians dressed in traditional finery served as reminders of Deadwood’s close links to the wars fought over the Black Hills and the surrounding plains. The procession also featured Deadwood’s living links with its past: the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of pioneers, all dressed in period garb, as well as the oldest woman in South Dakota. At every opportunity, the parade featured all types of horse-drawn vehicles: stagecoaches, more covered wagons, and buggies.
The floats exhibited great creativity on the part of their sponsors. One of the most spectacular was a replica of a train engine pulling two Pullman cars. Not to be outdone, the powerful Homestake Mining Company represented itself with displays of mining methods aboard a float of large gilded blocks. Other floats carried a miniature log cabin, over-acting impersonators of the first city officials, and groups of women bedecked in vintage clothing. Moving displays geared toward tourists included a float sponsored by the State Highway Commission depicting Black Hills scenery; a State Game Commission float featuring wildlife from nearby parks; a National Forest Service wagon warning of fire danger; and a reproduction of the Roosevelt Monument. Despite the frontier theme, evidence of municipal progress appeared with moving displays representing the Campfire Girls, city nurses, Elks, Fire Department, and local car dealers.
Following the parade, in Wild West show tradition, audiences were invited to Deadwood’s amusement park, where the festivities continued. Crowded into newly built grandstands, spectators were entertained on both days of the celebration with a combination of Indian dances and wagon races, shooting exhibitions, bronco riding, stagecoach holdups, pony races between Indians, cowboys, and cavalrymen, cowgirl races, and pony express races, along with demonstrations of western skills like mining and trick roping. These events were followed by staged reenactments of Indian attacks on an emigrant train and a settler’s cabin. On both evenings, the celebration departed from the Wild West show format and entered the world of the dime novel as the town itself became the center of attention. The city opened up its faux gambling hall with faro, roulette, and dice and card games. The nights ended with dances held at re-creations of the old Gem and Bella Union dance halls and at the fireman’s pavilion. Airplane rides offered by a vendor from Casper, Wyoming, were the only concession to modernism.
Lacking a living western celebrity from the time of Buffalo Bill to serve as an “authentic” main attraction, Days of ’76 organizers did the next best thing and resurrected those for whom the town was most famous. Locals playing Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Preacher Smith, a pioneer minister murdered near Deadwood in 1876, had starring roles throughout the festivities, particularly as the subjects of staged mini-dramas that organizers termed “historic scenes.” On the first day, local performers reenacted Hickok’s assassination and a wedding conducted by Preacher Smith, while a local Baptist minister gave the martyred Smith’s undelivered sermon. On 16 August, the second and final day, handbills announced the second part of the Hickok drama, a play by Nell Perrigoue and Mary Ann Woods entitled The Trial of Jack McCall. Although the women based their work on an actual event, they took major artistic liberties in making it conform to popular images of Hickok and Calamity Jane. In their play, the motive for Hickok’s assassination was fear among the camp’s corrupt element that Hickok was to be appointed city marshal. The writers also placed Calamity Jane at both the murder scene and the trial, hinting that she and the gunfighter had a romantic relationship. Finally, they added the fictional character Alkali Ike of dime-novel fame.
The liberal blend of truth and fiction in the celebration was personified by the figure who played the wholly fictional Deadwood Dick, the character invented by dime novelist Edward Wheeler in 1877. Richard Clarke, a grizzled man from the nearby town of Whitewood, played the role of Deadwood Dick and, in fact, appeared to believe he actually was the dime-novel character. Clarke had “pioneer status,” based on his long residence in the region, but lacked the romantic pedigree befitting a western hero. In real life, the ersatz Deadwood Dick was neither scout nor outlaw but, rather, a retired railroad worker. The thin, whitehaired, leather-skinned Clarke looked the part, however, and gladly assumed the role of the Wheeler character in the first Days of ’76 celebration. He dressed in buckskins, grew his hair long, sported high boots along with a western-style hat, and spoke convincingly of his frontier experiences to curious but naive tourists. Celebration promoters did little to persuade visitors otherwise.
Deadwood’s newspapers and Days of ’76 organizers hardly waited for the dust to settle before proclaiming the 1924 celebration an unqualified success and beginning a campaign to make it an annual event. The Daily Pioneer-Times estimated that the two-day celebration had drawn at least fourteen thousand visitors.56 Support for the permanent establishment of the celebration came from what just a few months earlier seemed an unlikely source: Edward Senn. Buoyed by the success of the event and relieved of his earlier worries by what turned out to be innocent representations of Deadwood’s bygone night life, the Telegram editor now called the celebration “an object lesson to the people of Deadwood what they can do if they pull hard together.” The community resolve, he wrote, served “notice to the world that despite the adverse conditions which have reduced the population of this city to one-third of what it was at its zenith, . . . Deadwood is yet very much alive and can come back.”
In addition to being a model for building community solidarity, the success of the Days of ’76 demonstrated the marketability of Deadwood’s history, which would prove the key to its future. “No other city has had such a glamor of romance thrown around it by the writers of fiction,” Senn wrote. Those who chose to come to visit “rightly reason that here, and here alone, can they find the nearest return to the scenes of the tales that enthralled them in youth.” In the future, the editor prophesied, thousands would come to recapture the days of the Old West, choking the city with sightseers and filling the local forests with campers.
Senn went on to offer his own views on how the celebration should be handled. Seeing its commercial potential, he wrote that if the event were “pushed and directed as it can and should be, within five years it will be one of the biggest drawing cards in the entire west.” The Telegram editor advised placing the celebration on a formal business footing through incorporation so that it could be run with greater efficiency and accountability. He also urged a greater emphasis on authenticity, recommending the establishment of a permanent hall of relics with more examples of pioneer mining operations; the complete slabbing of the downtown business district, including disguising telephone poles with pine trees; eliminating airplanes; and reducing rodeo events in favor of more Indian and pioneer activities, which, he believed, could be “the biggest drawing cards.”
The editor also returned to the theme of using the educational potential of the celebration to reverse the declining morality of young people. “Why confine reproduction of the night life of Deadwood to its seamy side as was done in this year’s celebration?,” he wondered and went on to recommend holding a ball with “young ladies attired in costumes . . . and dancing the dances of those [early] days.” Senn believed the opportunity “to see the decorous dancing of their grandmothers and compare it with the indecent dances now prevalent, filched from cesspools of the world and adopted ‘in best circles,’” would have a “sobering influence on some of the youth today.”
Senn’s plans for turning future Days of ’76 celebrations into morality plays underestimated the market appeal of the romanticized Wild West. Beginning in 1925, celebration organizers experimented with a community pageant depicting the pioneer history of Deadwood, complete with gossamer-clad dancing spirits and music. These dramatic presentations continued until 1928, when they were scrapped in favor of a return to the original emphasis on more action-packed programs, including a greatly expanded rodeo. In light of the response to the pioneer pageants, it was clear to organizers that audiences demanded the more raucous Wild West.
The success of the Days of ’76 celebration represented an important development in the cultural and civic identity of Deadwood. Following the first event, town leaders and promoters officially recognized Deadwood’s Wild West past as a means of attracting tourists. After 1924, boosters actively marketed Deadwood as “the historic town of the Black Hills” and embarked on a program to mark historic sites and publicize the resting places of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Following World War II, the mayor and local promoters went a step further in embracing a western identity when they launched a campaign to persuade residents to wear western garb at all times to satisfy tourist expectations of Deadwood as a true frontier town.
As Senn had recommended, subsequent years saw more professional management and sophisticated promotion. The second annual Days of ’76 included Western movie actor Jack Hoxie, who led the parade and emceed the afternoon programs at the amusement park. His appearance coincided with his filming of a movie in the Black Hills and established the event’s connection to Hollywood, which, by the 1920s, was the main source of Wild West visual imagery for the American public. In 1926, organizers landed an even bigger celebrity, the popular Western movie star Ken Maynard and his famous trick horse Tarzan. With the following year came the ultimate celebrity, President Calvin Coolidge. The presence of the dour New Englander, looking awkward as he sported a Lakota headdress, attracted international attention and helped to make the Days of ’76 a permanent Deadwood tradition.
The basic elements of the 1924 celebration—a Wild West show atmosphere with dime-novel elements, interspersed with pioneer his tory and examples of community progress—remained in place for decades. Eventually, the reenactments, relics, and reproductions of life in the Old West that marked the beginning of the Days of ’76 faded. Over time, emphasis on a generic cowboy past overshadowed the old role of mining and prospectors in the event. Today’s parade spectators are hard-pressed to see evidence of Deadwood’s origins as a mining boom town or its industrial past.
The success of the Days of ’76 played a role in the adoption of similar events in other famed western communities. In 1929, Tombstone, Arizona, launched its “Helldorado” celebration. Dodge City, Kansas, created its “Last Roundup” in the same year. Both events reflected Deadwood’s model of embracing a popularized version of the western past. Over the years, other towns followed suit.64 In 1946, Bernard DeVoto, the cantankerous Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and columnist for Harper’s magazine, attacked the “fake” festivals as “the property of the Chamber of Commerce,” whose primary purpose lay in attracting the “tourist trade and retail sales.” In DeVoto’s opinion, there was “no harm in celebrating the past if the celebration involves some knowledge of that it was or some respect for it, but Frontier Week seldom involves either.”
The replacing of historical elements with market-oriented ones follows the long course set by the first Days of ’76 organizers, who demonstrated how a community could benefit from a reputation once considered a liability. When defined as a business proposition and endorsed by the city, the once-controversial frontier memories of violence, prostitution, and gambling were transformed into forms of entertainment eagerly consumed by tourists familiar with the images presented in Wild West shows, dime and pulp novels, and films.66 The new expression of community memory was given legitimacy by Deadwood citizens, who endorsed it through participating in the parade and other staged events, donating historical relics for exhibition, wearing costumes, sporting beards, and even changing the town’s appearance. Senn and other critics became supporters once they recognized that the celebration was not a rejection of the old pioneering values they championed. Rather, it was an ingenious new means of transforming the town’s historic moment of fame, however notorious, into a commodity intended to ensure the survival of the community
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