Deadwood

Thursday, June 4, 2020

On Thursday morning, after poking around downtown Deadwood again briefly, I loaded up my truck and followed the hotel clerk’s directions out to Mount Moriah Cemetery, up on a hillside overlooking the town.  First time I can recall paying for admission to a cemetery, but – yes – there is an admission fee.  Part of the commercialization of a town whose major claim to fame is a murder that occurred nearly 150 years ago.  Mount Moriah was the highlight of my Deadwood experience (which made it the highlight of one of the lowest points of the trip for me.)  It’s a well maintained and appropriately peaceful final resting place, with a very nice overlook revealing an entire plain with the Town of Deadwood stretched out immediately below.

Of course, the selling point and most popular element of the cemetery is the small area where the bodies of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane lay in adjacent plots. If you’re going to make the journey to Deadwood and decide to visit the cemetery, be prepared for a bit of a hike over hilly and – at times – uneven ground. I spent about 2 hours there, but I take a lot of photos; I expect most will see all they want in 60 to 90 minutes.  I like the way the article in American Road summarizes Deadwood at their conclusion: “Gold made Deadwood’s fortune, and gold has kept it alive. Born screaming during the Black Hills gold rush, it never crawled far from its brassy yellow crib.”

I left Deadwood late Thursday morning on a mission to find Four Corners – the site of the last major stagecoach robbery in the old west – along the stagecoach trail as I followed it down into Wyoming.  But on the way, my faith in road trips was restored again by many miles of wonderful backroad photography opportunities. Barns, ranches, cemeteries, and more than a few wild antelope running around were great therapy for me after my time in Deadwood.

Finding Four Corners, Wyoming, was fun.  There’s almost nothing left of the place now – even the meager attempts at commercialization to scare up a few last pennies from tourism seem to have taken their last gasps.  The place is about 17 miles north of Newcastle, Wyoming, and you’ll know it because of the signage – until the last of that goes the way of the tumbleweeds out there.  There’s an old cinder block building originally painted turquoise which loudly proclaims itself the Four Corners Post Office in bright yellow letters.  It’s boarded up but still has an old satellite dish attached to the edge of its roof.  Not sure what’s going on there, but the place was abandoned at high noon on that Thursday. 

A formerly proud sign still remains describing the spot as “Canyon Springs Station: Site of the Treasure Run Stage Robbery.” On September 26, 1878, the robbery successfully liberated what would today be almost $2 million in gold bullion (in those days it was about $27,000), and it is reported that about 40% of that is still buried somewhere nearby. Reminds me of the legend of the Superstition Gold Mine in Arizona. I was having trouble understanding where in the world robbers could have hidden in that area in 1878 – it’s flat as the proverbial pancake for miles in all directions.  But then, when I read the account on the sign, it all made sense.  Sounds like there was an “inside man” to me. If you decide to take a look too, you won’t have to set aside much time to linger there.  It’s one of those places where you pause for a few minutes to consider what happened on that very spot 150 years ago, look around to see whether you can envision it all, maybe take a photo or two, and move on. An hour is a generous allotment for the purpose.

The highways and backroads (aside from the highways it’s all backroads in this neck of the woods) are filled with buttes, abandoned ranch buildings, and some pretty nice overlook spots.  I paused along the way to capture images of several, but given unlimited time, I’d have spent another full day out there happily clicking away.  What a beautiful part of the world….

I stopped in at Newcastle, Wyoming headed south, as it was listed in American Road as a significant waypoint on the stagecoach run.  There are a few points of interest in Newcastle including the Anna Miller Museum and the Jenney Stockade (circa 1875), but the COVID-19 craziness meant they were all locked up tight as a drum.  Newcastle became significant as a result of coal mining, and was founded in 1889.  These days it is the Weston County seat, and a nice quiet little town without much else to speak of.  However, in search of Hat Creek, I stopped in at the County Seat and – once I found the County Assessor and showed her my copy of page 73 of American Road – received detailed directions to the spot I was looking for.  She turned out to be gracious, respectful, and helpful – in spite of the suspicious looks I kept getting from the young county sheriff’s deputy out in the corridor.  I love it when I run into a competent public servant! 

While I was in Newcastle, the storm I’d observed coming my way out on the highway caught up with me.  Although there were no gullies to be seen, this would have been described by my grandfather as a “real gulley-washer,” and at its worst, was a pretty serious hailstorm.  Fortunately, I had just emerged from the county courthouse and was able to get my truck under the awning at the gas station across the street, avoiding any hail damage.  There’s not a lot of cover out on the open Wyoming roads, so I was fortunate to find this spot; timing is everything!  If you visit Newcastle, and the museums are open, allow yourself a few hours (2 to 3 hours would suffice.)  Honestly, if they are still closed, the gas station and fast food there is about the only reason you might want to stop.

The next stop – for both the bygone stagecoach and my current-day Honda Ridgeline – was Hat Creek, Wyoming.  Hat Creek was particularly intriguing to me because the American Road article was deliberately obscure about its actual location – as they were with one other attraction, which I’ll mention later.  Hat Creek has an interesting history in the sense that its location is an accident of misguidance on the part of a US Cavalry troop back in 1875.  It all worked out eventually though, as Hat Creek was designated an official stop on the Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage Road in 1876. A 2-story log building from the 1880s remains from the stagecoach stop’s legacy, now on private land owned by the Wade family, and left largely to itself.  At various times, the building is reported to have housed a telegraph office, a blacksmith shop, and a brewery. 

There have to be some stories there, although by now I’m sure almost none of them remain in the minds of the living.  When you find the place, there is some signage describing its place in history – I’ve provided a photo of it for you.  The entire stage station road, though just about as far from the beaten path as you can imagine, was really interesting to me.  One such example is an old abandoned building that appeared to be a one-room schoolhouse (which had the remains of a swing set, an old hand-pump well, and a hitching post for horses on the site.)  This is a drive-by-and-read-the-sign event, much like the Four Corners experience.  And it is no less richly populated with the ghosts of history.  You might just feel some of that; hear voices from the past whispering – or screaming – faintly in the relentless wind.  The sun there at Hat Creek bakes the prairie as the wind rips forever along, sandblasting everything in sight – just as it did 150 years before.

Just as Deadwood, South Dakota was one of the low points for me on this sojourn, one of the unexpected highlights was Lusk, Wyoming. Like Lead and Newcastle, Lusk too was impacted by the COVID-19 scare, closing its Stagecoach Museum to my great disappointment.  However, some well-known landmarks such as the Covered Wagon Motel as well as other lesser-known – and much more difficult to find – landmarks such as the Mother Featherlegs monument remain.  And my search for Mother Featherlegs turned out to be the pinnacle of my adventure. 

Mother Featherlegs was a ‘lady of the evening” named Charlotte Shephard who acquired her nickname from a cowboy that described her downy pantalets as comparable to the legs and feet of a chicken.  The unfortunate woman was murdered in 1879 near the roadhouse she and her partner operated.  Her partner, known as “Dangerous Dick Davis” (a.k.a. “The Terrapin”) later confessed to the crime.  The monument is, in my experience, notoriously difficult to find – particularly after sunset – and locating it should only be attempted with a full tank of gas.  I tried to find it for an hour or so on the evening of Thursday the 4^th, but ultimately turned back when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to find anything while there was sufficient daylight to photograph it.  Nonetheless, the drive during that search was pure magic.  The sun set over working ranches, and then pastures occupied by cows and horses, giving way eventually to a brilliant yellow moon that washed across rocky moonscape-like terrain.  The night was cool and absolutely still, and I drove – slowly – for well over an hour in each direction.  I watched a glorious red-to-gold sunset as it burned itself out behind the mountains.  I rolled the windows down, started one of my favorite playlists softly playing, and slowly moved down the gravel road, darting from shadow to shadow and just marveling at the beauty of the prairie in the moonlight.  Occasionally a small herd of black cows would appear, sometimes right in the middle of the road.  They didn’t move even as I approached, so I slowly picked my way around them – thankful for my 4-wheel drive, and grateful that they weren’t Brahma bulls. I spoke softly to them as I passed, but they just stared back dumbly, wondering – I imagine – what in the world I was doing invading their grazing in the middle of the night.  It was just me, the cows, and the moon, and it was glorious.  I guess you’d have to be there to understand.