Deadwood is a historic gold-rush town tucked into a gulch in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gold rush began in 1876 and the town quickly became notorious — Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead at a card table here that same year, and Calamity Jane made it her base. Both are buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, which overlooks the town.
The entire downtown is a National Historic Landmark. Today Deadwood runs largely on casinos — gambling was legalized in 1989 to fund historic preservation — but the old wooden storefronts, saloons along Main Street, and the general frontier atmosphere are genuine. The Adams Museum is the best place to make sense of the gold rush; the giant pit of the Homestake Mine up the road in Lead shows where the actual wealth came from. Mount Rushmore is about 50 miles to the south, making Deadwood a natural stop on a Black Hills road trip.