Our Cross-Country Road Trip 2011: Deadwood, South Dakota

Deadwood was officially our first destination on our trip, though we ended up staying here again on our way back home. What a fun little town this was! Any fans of the wild, wild west will find Deadwood to be a must-see destination. Being the home of the fatal shooting of Wild Bill Hickok, it is full of American history, some good and some not so good. In the saloon where Hickok was shot you can even see his final hand of cards he was holding when he died.

We started out at the train depot turned museum and visitor center to get the low down on what were the best attractions to see.

Here are some pictures from inside the old station.

After that, we thoroughly enjoyed strolling through the main street of town where the buildings have been restored to look exactly like you would picture them to look back in the day with a bit of modernity mixed in.

Here are some pictures from the downtown area.

Our last stop of the day was at the Adam's Museum, where we learned all about the history and famous historical figures of Deadwood. Very nice museum! The basement had a wonderful section devoted to the Haas family, one of the first official pioneer homeschool families (I say official because they actually had paperwork from the state naming them as a homeschool family). The mother wrote many published articles about homeschooling and educational philosophy. She was very much in favor of learning mostly through exploration of nature, as well as reading, reading and doing some more reading. They had built an extensive home library, some of which was on display at the library. Very cool!

Here is the beautiful old courthouse next to the museum.

This was the only picture we were allowed to take inside the museum. These were life-sized pictures of some of the famous miners and gunslingers of Deadwood; look how short some of those old miners were!