Deadwood is a most peculiar little city and very attractive in its
peculiarity, being crowded snugly into a depression between a number of
steep pine-wooded hills, which gives an appearance suggestive of a
bird's nest securely located among the forks of a branching tree, and as
is the case in a nest, business is chiefly transacted at the lowest
depth of the enclosure. As the busy center of a great gold-mining
region, the metropolis of the Hills, and the outgrowth of an exciting
historical past, it claims and receives interesting attention. And while
the whole Black Hills region is still distinctly a man's country, it
is called woman's paradise, and surely nowhere else are the daughters of
Eve received with a more gracious courtesy or surrounded by an equally
unobtrusive protecting care.
[Illustration: Approaching Deadwood. Page 176.]
The streets leading up to the residences lack very little of standing on
end, and the houses appear to have been hung in place by means of hooks
and wire cord like pictures on a wall. The smelter has no reception day
but admits visitors as if their pleasure were a guarantee of profit.
The finest scenery in the Hills is said to be that of the Spearfish
Canon, north of Deadwood, and the finest of that at the Falls, but this
may be doubtful as other points are very beautiful, especially where the
Burlington & Missouri Road requires a distance of seven miles to climb
the canon wall.
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