Wednesday, August 1, 2007

16. Wild Bill's Grave Site






Up on Mt. Moriah overlooking Deadwood you will find the cemetery where Deadwood’s famous people are buried. Buried here are, Seth Bullock, Calamity Jane, Preacher Smith, and of course, Wild Bill Hickok. There is a Boot Hill tour, complete with narration and antidotes, you can catch in town that takes you up here. But if you don’t want to be stuck on an open air bus with a bunch of tourists, you can drive up to the ticket booth, park your car, pay the one dollar entrance fee, get a map, and walk the quarter mile up to Wild Bills grave. It’s marked by a five foot bronze bust of his likeness inside an iron fence. And because Calamity Jane got her wish, you will find her buried next to him,…. but outside the fence and without a bronze bust marker. I think Wild Bill would have preferred it that way. After all, Calamity didn’t do anything to become famous, she just became famous; sort of like Paris Hilton, - she is just,.. famous…. for no particular reason.

Like at pretty much all celebrity grave sites you will find a small pile of trinkets and mementos that people have left as an offering of some kind, I’m not sure why, maybe to make some sort of connection with the famous,…. or just to say that they had been there. That’s what I like to do, I like to leave my little white ceramic crosses, the way the Lone Ranger left his silver bullets, at celebrity gravesite too, it says, The Maestro’s been here. I left one at Jim Morrison’s grave site in Paris, France, and one at Marilyn Monroe, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Tom Mix and now Wild Bill’s grave sites here in the US. .....oh yes, and I left one at Graceland... on Elvis' grave.

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