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Deadly Daring Deadwood Dick

© Mary Trotter Kion

Back in 1927 Dick Clarke, known by some as Deadwood Dick, flew to Washington D.C. and shook hands with President Coolidge. Later, in the early 1940s, when Dick went to that big roundup in the sky, most of the newspapers across the country wrote sorrowful stories about him. Those two occurrences, in them selves, don't sound exactly like big doings. At least they don't, not until you stop and consider that Deadwood Dick never existed.

And believe it or not, the whole thing got started by an eastern dude back in New York City in 1876. Now this fellow with the big talent for tales was a hack writer by the name of Edward L. Wheeler who dug up his own nugget when gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the town of Deadwood rose from the dust.

Wheeler, though not being inclined to go prospecting after the shinny metal that was attracting the nation's attention, wanted to create his own strike without trekking any farther westward than the West End Bar and Grill on the outskirts of Manhattan, New York. It may have been in that exact establishment, over frothy glass, that Wheeler got to thinking about this booming town out west that had been aptly named Deadwood after a fire charred all the trees on one side of the place. Wheeler, being a writer and all, may have been in a poetic mood of a sorts that day when he came up with the idea for a western character who was associated with that booming burg in the Black Hills. It just seems, somewhat, natural that the character that entered Wheeler's brain would be know as Deadwood Dick.

Well, Wheeler drew a royal flush that day and the cards continued to fall in order for the next 15 years and 64 books later. Ole Deadwood Dick became the man's man of the west as he chased outlaws, was an outlaw, a hunter, Indian fighter, cowboy and gambler, just to name a few of Dick's in-print occupations. He could out-shoot Buffalo Bill, out-outlaw Jesse James, fight Indians better than Davy Crockett, and not a lovely lady in the west need fear for her life. The damsel in distress could always count on Deadwood Dick coming to her rescue, just in the nick of time. Why, I bet if Dick had hung around just a bit longer he could have out-sung Gene Autry and tuned his get-fiddle, saddled his horse, and fought off a whole band of Sioux all at the same time while riding off into the sunset--where, of course, he would then kiss his horse.

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