Spearfish Canyon, Deadwood, Sturgis
The above places are on a scenic loop in the northern part of the Black Hills.
Spearfish Canyon is very pretty. Deep canyons with lots of trees. At a little town near the head of the canyon I saw an intriguing sign and an arrow pointing up a side canyon road. We followed the road for about four miles to this.
Here are a couple shots of the area. Can you tell what part of the film was done here?
On to Deadwood. An old mining town who’s chief claim to fame seems to be that Wild Bill Hickock was killed here. When the mining ended, Deadwood just about died. Then they ‘rebuilt’ their image. First they got the whole town declared an historic site somehow. Then they put parking meters on EVERY spot in town. Then came casinos. The main street is three and a half blocks long. Three of those blocks are nonstop casinos on both sides of the street with nothing else between them. They are not big like Tahoe or Las Vegas. More the size of a typical bar but every one has slots and card games. Probably 40-50 casinos in the three blocks and then there are the hotels, each of which has a casino. The town gets a cut of all action. It is doing well. The one sight if possible interest, Hickock’s grave, is in a cemetery that charges admission. We left.
The area around Deadwood is picturesque and the town next to it, Lead (pronounced ‘Leed’) is home to what was the countries (if not the worlds’) largest gold mine.
Next was Sturgis, SD. For the last three or four weeks we have seen a large number of tourists on motorcycles. Most of them were vacationing after having attended the Sturgis motorcycle rally. This yearly event is like Mecca for bikers. The economy for hundreds of miles is affected by the attendees of this event. We have seen signs several states away saying ‘welcome bikers’. Nice town. Nice park where we had lunch. I could see facilities that would handle large crowds. We did not see one motorcycle. Not one. It is several weeks post event but it was sort of wierd.
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