August 19, 2022
Rise and shine early today. At least early for us. We left the house around 8:30AM and headed to Deadwood. We checked things out and had an idea of what we wanted to see and do. We arrived at the Deadwood Visitors Center. The young lady there was very helpful and had tons of good information. We purchased a day pass to ride on the trolley. The first thing we did was to completely take the trolley on its entire trip. This way it gave us a good lay of the land. Our first trolley stop was in front of the Brothel Museum. We ventured upstairs but the tours only start on the hour. We had some time to kill so we walked a few doors up the street to check out some shops. One we went into was the Old Saloon Number 10. The place where Wild Bill Hickcock was killed by Jack McCall. We went upstairs and had a root beer float. From there we went back to the museum. More on that later.
After the museum we found a place for lunch and timed it just right to see the first of three shootouts on Main Street. It was an interesting true story. During a card game, the Sheriff took someone away because they were rowdy and drunk. In the process the drunk fired a shot and it struck a card player in the forehead. He lived for 67 days after being shot. Amazing. After the shootout, we walked a couple of blocks up the street and ventured into the new Saloon Number 10. We were killing time before the 3:00PM Wild Bill shooting re-enactment. I thought it would be cool to play cards at the Saloon. Deadwood is rich in casinos. The only table active at this time was a 3 card poker table with a $2 minimum. So I pulled up a chair and bought some chips. After a few hands, Nancy decided she wanted to play also. So I gave her some of my chips and we sat at the table and played. We left the table for a brief time to see the re-enactment. We then went back to the table and bought some more chips and played for about 1 1/2 hours. It was a lot of fun. The other players were great to talk to and the dealers were fabulous. It was then time to catch a trolley back to the truck and go home.
The Brothel Museum was very interesting and educational. It was an hour guided tour. This brothel had been in business since 1876 until all of them were closed down in 1980 after a federal raid. In 1980 there were four remaining brothels. The story was that Deadwood did not like change. The brothels were very generous to local charities, fire department, and Little League. According to a modern sheriff, they never had any trouble from any of the brothels. There were four bedrooms and each one was decorated in an era specific decor. The Madam’s office contained a safe and an interesting dresser system where each girl would put the money and then it would be divided up at the end of the night. Initially the house only took 40%. Eventually it was increased to 50%. The girls had weekly health checks, paid for by the employer.
We got home around 6:00PM and at 7:00PM we were going to meet Belinda and Kathy and Leslie and Bill at the Pavilion at the campground. We all got together to play cards. Leslie and Bill taught us how play Golf. Yes, that’s an actual card game. It was lots of fun. Great that all the work campers can have a good time together.
