FIFTY YEARS BACK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19744, 17 September 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

FIFTY YEARS BACK.

" DEADWOOD DICK" 'SHADES^ AX OLD-TIME GOLD RUSH. THE OLD "PENNY DREADFULS."

Shades of " Dcadwood Dick," " Wild Bill", Hickok and " Calamity Jane" recently stalked the streets of the mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota, joining the massive panorama, which turned back, half a century to stage for President CooJidge the scenes of that bold era of the gold rush in the " Dakoties." For weeks preparations were made. AU stores in the main streets built false fronts. One represented the historic No. 10 saloon, where Jack MeCall pulled a trigger in Hickok's ear. One was a representation •of the " Green Front," where the bouncer was bigger than Jack Dempsey. Another was the pine-board bank, where miners deposited their dust. They called it " The Days of '76," and the townspeople went to extraordinary efforts, because Mr. Coolidge went up there, to be crowned a chief of the Sioux tribe. Thousands of Indians were assembled from all parts of the country, in their war paint and feathers, for the historic moment in their tribal lives, when

the great " pale' -ce" became their religious chief The ceremony was conducted Iry " Yellow Robe," an Indian chief, who sebcted " Leading .Eagle " as the President's name. It is fifty year.-! sin re *' Calamity Jane" drank the saloons dry, and since Hickok was killed, but citizens impersonated those historic characters, and walked the streets on the banks of the Spearfish Creek, as they did in those far-off days. Out on the hillside, by the edge of the town. Jane and Wild Bull lie buried, sids by side. Bill was quick on the trigger, but, they say, always on the side of law and order. Jane had her bad moments, but when the soldiers had smallpox, she was the only one that would nurse them. The President, in western garb, crowned with a cowboy's ten-gallon hat, travelled via the historic town of Custer, and spent the afternoon and evening with the town that has been immortalised in the Englishspeaking world by the " penny dreadfuls" written about " Deadwood Dick" and the historic old mining settlement, sleeping peacefully in the foothills of the Dakotas.