Deadwood Gulch

Deadwood Gulch is the terrain behind everything in town. The city was built where Deadwood and Whitewood gulches meet, and the historic district documents describe a community in a basic Y shape whose rugged topography has allowed little new growth. That constraint explains why so much of the historic town survives: there was nowhere else to build, and later construction mostly clustered along the narrow valley streets at the edges.

The gulch was also a mining landscape. Claims were issued upstream and downstream from the point of discovery, from canyon rim to canyon rim, and camps grew up around them. Its narrowest stretch held Chinatown, at the lower end of Main Street.

You can take in the whole setting from above at Mount Moriah Cemetery, which sits on a plateau overlooking the gulch. The city’s walking tour points out that the ridgeline beyond Main Street remains relatively unchanged after more than a century of development.

Sources: NPS: Deadwood Historic District nomination and amendment, City of Deadwood: Mount Moriah Cemetery, City of Deadwood Archives: Historic Deadwood Walking Tour