A Collection of Black Hills Presidential History
The Black Hills of South Dakota are filled with history and mystery, from free-roaming wooly and Columbian mammoths to the Lakota warriors and cavalry soldiers in whose footsteps modern visitors walk every day.
No less than 15 U.S. Presidents have visited the state since its inception in 1889. Over the years, other dignitaries, from Wyatt Earp and Mark Twain to Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh and Kevin Costner, have stopped in Deadwood, once known as the wildest and wooliest town in the West.
Here at the 1899 Inn, we cherish our collective history with antiques, artifacts, books and original artwork that beckon back to days long past and recall those remarkable individuals who helped shape our state and, in some instances, an entire nation.
One of the Inn’s most treasured keepsakes is a framed 1917 letter signed by Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th president, thanking a well-wisher for sending him a sketch. Roosevelt first visited Deadwood in 1893 as a U.S. Civil Service commissioner and gave an impromptu speech for the Republican party.
But, it is T.R.’s two-decade-long friendship with Deadwood Marshal Seth Bullock that is fondly recalled today in this special slice of the world. Bullock would later become a Rough Rider, visit Roosevelt in London, England, and at Roosevelt’s insistence, serve as a U.S. Marshal and, later, the superintendent of Black Hills National Forest, the first of its kind in the country.
Roosevelt, who rarely stood still, worried that his own boys – Theodore Jr., Kermit and Archibald – would be “soft” after growing up in a privileged lifestyle at Sagamore Hill and in the White House. Consequently, in 1903, 1905, 1907 and 1909, Roosevelt sent his boys by train to Bullock in the Black Hills. Bullock would subsequently take those offspring out on the prairie for a week, sans butlers and bathrooms, and teach them to shoot guns, build fires, take care of their horses before they took care of themselves, and essentially “man up.”
Roosevelt’s framed photo and original letter command a prized spot in one of the Inn’s spacious parlors, immediately above a framed copy of arguably his most famous speech, “In the Arena.”
Adjacent to that treasure is a framed photo of innkeeper Tom Griffith with a personal message signed by President Ronald Reagan, who wrote the foreword for Tom’s first book, America’s Shrine of Democracy, written to commemorate Mount Rushmore National Memorial’s 50th anniversary in 1991. Below that keepsake is a photo of the Golden Anniversary celebration with a signed White House card from President George H.W. Bush, who served as keynote speaker at that noteworthy event.
Elsewhere in the Queen Anne Victorian mansion, visitors will find a bevy of books, both historical and contemporary, including two signed by President Jimmy Carter and President Barrack Obama. Guests also enjoy handling an actual piece of granite from one of the four faces of freedom on Mount Rushmore, presented to Tom by his longtime friend, Nick Clifford, the last man alive of 400 drill-dusty miners who helped sculptor Gutzon Borglum carve the national icon in the Black Hills.
Come and see first-hand these historical treasures at Deadwood’s 1899 Inn. And step into the past.