Sunset Magazine
Peter Fish explores the South Dakota town made famous by the hit TV show
This is a tale of two cities. The first is a mining camp in the Black Hills, where greed, lust, and violence kindle in such volatile combinations, you think they may burn the whole town down. The second is a tourist attraction whose tidy Main Street throngs with tourists jingling the quarters they won in the casino slots.
The first town is Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876, as experienced on the HBO series Deadwood. The second is Deadwood, South Dakota, as experienced in real time in 2006. The genuine and virtual towns have become inseparable.
It’s Deadwood’s real history that made the television series possible. It’s the television Deadwood that is breathing new life into the real town ― proving that in 2006, some juicy Western history can be as valuable as gold.
For proof of that statement, you can ask Mary Kopco. Director of Deadwood’s Adams Museum & House, she was in her office when someone from Hollywood phoned to gather facts about her town. How much would a miner’s pick have cost in 1876? What about a gold pan?
“I’m not a big TV watcher,” Kopco says, but at that point, she learned what was going on. Television writer and executive producer David Milch, co-creator of NYPD Blue, was filming a new HBO series set in Deadwood.
For the rest of this article: https://www.sunset.com/travel/northwest/real-deadwood