| Friday morning, still cloudy. |
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| In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt declared Devils Tower the first national monument under the Antiquities Act. |
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| About 50 million years ago molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and cooled underground. As it cooled it contracted and fractured into columns. Over millions of years, erosion of the sedimentary rock exposed Devils Tower. |
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| This place is sacred to many nearby Native American tribes and sometimes prayer bundles will be tied to trees. |
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| I looked for giant alien ships but maybe they only show up at night or when Richard Dreyfuss is around. |
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| It's weird, but I had never seen the thing from a different angle. It looked weird from this side. |
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| The last new state of the trip. |
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| More snow. |
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| I had some time in the schedule and the town of Deadwood was nearby, so I stopped for a brief walk about. |
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| The old federal courthouse and post office was built in 1907. |
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| The old Pineview Apartments is now a new hotel. |
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| A lot of these buildings used to house bars and saloons. A lot of these buildings currently house bars and saloons. |
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| I have never seen the television show Deadwood but I imagine there were fewer souvenir shops on that show. |
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| I imagine it probably looked more like this. |
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| But now it looks like this. |
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| There were fewer souvenir shops on the television show but probably at least as many casinos. |
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| The historic Bullock Hotel, the oldest
in Deadwood, was built by Seth Bullock around 1895. Bullock was a
sheriff. Since I don't know where else to put it, I read a marker about the Jewish American pioneers of Deadwood. Seth Bullock's partner (business partner, not same-sex partner) was Sol Star. He was mayor for fourteen years. He also established the Deadwood Flouring Mill with two other Jewish partners. Many Jewish families took their places beside their non-Jewish neighbors. |
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| The old Fairmont Hotel was also once a casino and a brothel. It is supposedly haunted but of course it isn't because ghosts don't exist. |
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| It was in this saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead on August 2, 1876. |
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| Since1903, the Franklin Hotel has hosted famous people like Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth and John Wayne. Actually they may be the only famous people to have visited for all I know. |
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| The Lawrence County Courthouse. |
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