Myths surround these two Wild West legends synonymous with the town of Deadwood. Although Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane spent only a few weeks in Deadwood at the same time, their fame and fate have become intertwined and their relationship legendary. James D. McLaird examines the contemporary accounts that turned these two Wild West wanderers into dime-novel and motion-picture stars. Contemporary novelists and journalists created an astonishingly strong legacy for both Calamity Jane and Wild Bill, accounting for much of their notoriety. Gun fights, scouting missions, and daring escapes from enemies filled stories about the dashing pair; even their day-to-day existence seems to have been fraught with danger and excitement, teetering on the brink between lawful and unlawful. McLaird traces the role that writers and the city of Deadwood itself played in the creation of the legacies of the famous couple. Fact and fiction have become so intertwined that a definitive picture of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill is almost impossible. Their brief friendship and subsequent burial next to each other in Mount Moriah Cemetery simply added to their legendary status and made them stalwarts of Wild West pop culture and Deadwood mythology. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends is the second book in the South Dakota Biography Series.

Wild Bill Hickok & Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends (South Dakota Biography Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

James D. McLaird

Historical

South Dakota Historical Society

During the 1920s and 1930s, South Dakota's agriculture-based economy collapsed. Political historian R. Alton Lee examines state and federal efforts to fight the effects of perennial drought and the Great Depression, focusing on the administration of New Deal relief programs by both Democratic and Republican officials.

A New Deal for South Dakota: Drought, Depression, and Relief, 19201941

History

R Alton Lee

Americas

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Books by South Dakota Historical Society