East Cottage

Summary: A private home set just a few steps from the main house. There are two queen bedrooms with comfy memory foam mattresses, a shiny bright bathroom with tub/shower, an exceptionally clean and stocked full kitchen, and a well-appointed living room. This historic cottage has been recently renovated to provide clean comfort for up to six guests. The front porch offers a quiet respite in the morning sun or evening outdoor dining. A magnificent, full hot breakfast is included and served in the Inn’s formal dining room for cottage guests.

This room may be combined with the West Cottage next door for larger parties that want two adjacent living areas.

Features: This is the east side of a private cottage just behind the main house. Constructed as a duplex in the 1920s, the house has a cozy covered porch with seating and views of the pine-covered hills that surround Deadwood. This half of the cottage is a self-contained home. You walk through your front door into a living area with three chairs, big east and south-facing windows, and an internet connected TV. There’s also a queen size futon that can be folded down into a bed. Just beyond the living room is a dining nook with a table and seating for four, and a full kitchen with modern electric range and oven, vintage streamline 1940s refrigerator, coffee maker, and microwave. (The antique 1920s Hotpoint range doesn’t work anymore, but it’s a neat piece of history!) From there, you work your way down the hall to two bedrooms, each with a queen bed, antique dressers, and bedside tables with lamps. The bathroom is in the middle of the hallway, just across from the bedrooms. There’s a single pedestal sink, toilet, and bathtub/shower combo. The cottage is decorated with eclectic local art and objects acquired by the innkeepers on their travels around the world, including photography from Vietnam, an original print by a Native artist, and a poster signed by actor Kevin Costner. The cottage has high-speed wireless internet throughout, and there’s a vintage Victrola-style bluetooth speaker in the dining area.

Groups: This side of the cottage sleeps up to six, but if you have a larger group, you may consider pairing it with the West Cottage next door, which also have two bedrooms, one bathroom, and can sleep up to six. You can also book rooms in the main house.

Light: There are lots of windows in the cottage. They mostly face east, toward a historic barn next door. From the front porch you can catch views of the distinctive Yates Headframe, perched on a hilltop about a mile and a half away. The Yates Shaft was built in the 1930s to provide access to the deeper levels of the Homestake Gold Mine. Today, the headframe elevators are used by scientists to descend into the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The windows at the back of the house look over a quiet meadow where deer like to congregate.

History: Henry Benjamin Wardman, a local hardware merchant, built the large house that would become the inn in early 1899. But he had been living in a smaller home on the same lot for several years already. When construction began, they moved the older house to the back of the property - an impressive feat of engineering for the 19th century, before heavy equipment and modern power tools. The older house, which probably dated to the 1870s, stayed in its new location for about another quarter-century. But sometime in the 1920s - probably after Wardman’s death in 1926 - the old house was demolished and replaced by this duplex. The two sides are nearly mirror-images of each other. The cottages have been used both by nightly guests and long-term residents during the past century. Both sides were recently renovated and updated for guests of the 1899 Inn.