Deadwood's Main Street runs the length of the gulch and is the spine of the National Historic Landmark district. The two- and three-storey brick fronts mostly date from the 1879 fire that levelled the original wooden town, and the architecture is a remarkably coherent Victorian-Western hybrid — cast-iron facades, painted advertisements still visible on the gable ends, and false fronts that lend themselves to the staged gunfights run for tourists in summer.
Today many of the buildings house casinos, which were legalized in 1989 to fund historic preservation. The result is a slightly surreal blend of slot machines and museum-grade architecture, but the rents from gambling have paid for facade restoration, the cemetery, the trolley and the heritage signage. Walk the length of the street, look up at the upper floors, and read the plaques: most buildings have a real history under the neon.