It’s been an exciting 15 years since Deadwood began offering the only legal games of chance between Nevada and Atlantic City on November 1, 1989.

Not that gambling was anything new in the historic old town.

For more than 100 years, ever since the first faro dealers arrived in the summer of 1876, high stakes card games, roulette tables and slot machines had been part of the Deadwood scene. Gambling was pretty much wide open through the 1930s and early ‘40s, slightly more discreet thereafter. Legalization simply allowed tables to be moved out of back rooms where illicit card games were usually in play despite occasional raids and hefty fines.

The last illegal poker game was in progress in the basement of Dakota Territory Saloon when a state initiated measure made the game legal at the stroke of midnight June 30, 1989.

Putting regulations in place to govern gaming took another four months while out-of-state investors swarmed into town and frenetic construction turned deteriorating downtown buildings into casinos.

Despite competition from proliferating Indian tribal casinos across the United States, Deadwood continues to rake in a fair share of the pot, betting on the draw of the Black Hills as a prime vacation spot and the alluring history of its beginnings as a wild gold camp.

That scent of a disreputable past, lingering in the mountain air like the powerful perfume of a painted lady, lured David Milch into producing the Deadwood HBO television series now heading into a second season.

Both gambling and prostitution became illegal when Dakota Territory was divided into the states of North and South Dakota in 1889. But isolated at the extreme west edge of the state, Deadwood was largely able to ignore state laws with impunity.

Local law authorities closed their eyes to the 1881 act of incorporation that instructed city fathers to "restrain, prohibit and suppress tippling shops, billiard tables, ten-pin alleys, houses of prostitution … games and gambling houses …"

Efforts by respectable citizens to shut down illegal activities were occasionally successful. In 1907 a local newspaper reported on a raid of five gambling houses:

Roulette and faro layouts to the value of over $1000 were seized, along with a number of players and dealers, and moving into the new courthouse will be celebrated with a large bonfire at the expense of the gamblers.

Slot machines and gaming tables were again confiscated and destroyed in a 1947 raid, but high stakes card games continued to be a Deadwood attraction. Professional gamblers, local merchants, territory ranchers and businessmen from other Black Hills towns came to Deadwood to play poker in saloon back rooms.

The late George Moses who grew up in Deadwood during the depression and sold papers on the street witnessed some of those games.

"I remember a big game that had been running day and night at the Buffalo for more than a week," Moses wrote in an article published in Deadwood Magazine.

The ranchers were down from the north country, taking on heavy bettors from Sturgis and businessmen from Deadwood and Lead. The game was winding down, most of the money was on the table. Bill, a professional gambler, interrupted play to take a bathroom break. When he returned to the table some minutes later, Bill turned up his cards with the comment, "Here they are boys, and they’re all black."

His same-suit straight took that pot, making Bill the big winner for the entire 10 days the game had been in progress. Gamblers and observers continued to talk about this game for many years, always with an unanswered question. Did Bill put that winning hand together while he was in the men’s room?

Despite money brought in by illegal activities, Deadwood was precariously clinging to survival by the 1970s, eking out a bare-bones existence on a short summer tourist season and a small fall and winter influx of hunters, skiers and snowmobilers.

When the last four brothels were padlocked during a May 1980 raid, Deadwood was about to fold its hand. Streets and buildings were deteriorating, downtown storefronts were boarded up, many residents had moved to greener pastures.

Stalwart survivors looked for ways to rescue the dying community and its National Historic Landmark designation. Concerned citizens organized a Deadwood You Bet Committee and by linking gambling to historic preservation, set out to get the gaming issue on the 1988 state ballot.

That grassroots effort by a small but determined group paid off when conservative South Dakota voters approved the constitutional amendment that at long last made gambling legal in Deadwood.

Maximum bets at Deadwood’s casinos were bumped from the original $5 limit to $100 four years ago. Gross revenues from card games increased by 86 percent in the first month of higher stakes wagering, adding to the historic preservation kitty.

Fifteen years invested in the nation’s most ambitious historic preservation project is a success story written by a small Black Hills town – an unfinished story that continues to unfold as Deadwood adds another candle to a gambling anniversary cake. DM