Seth Bullock's Ghost - Part One

Seth Bullock

The Man, The Legend, the Ghost

Part One

     Deadwood. South Dakota is full of rich and colorful history and if you’ve got a yearning to vacation someplace other than Florida or Hawaii and want to experience something exceptional, then Deadwood, South Dakota is the place to go. Not only is it full of history, but it’s also full of ghosts. And today, I’d like to introduce you to one such spirit who is said to haunt the town’s first and finest hotel...  But before I tell you of his ghost, let me tell you a bit of the man...

     Seth Bullock, was born July 23rd of 1849, in Amherstburg, Canada West - which is now called Ontario, located on the other side of the Detroit River, to George Bullock, a retired British Sergeant-Major who was active in local politics, and Anna Findley-Bullock, a Scotswoman. Not a lot is known of his early years but what little is known, shows that he was not a happy child at home. His father was a strict man who was known for beating Seth for even minor infractions. Seth first ran away at the age of thirteen and then again at sixteen to Montana where he lived for a while with his older sister Jessie. By the age of Eighteen, Seth left home for good and in 1867 he became a resident of Helena Montana where he was subsequently ran and served in the Territorial Senate in 1871, and helped to create Yellowstone National Park in 1872. In 1873, Seth Bullock was elected sheriff of Lewis and Clark County, Montana. And it was during his tenure as sheriff that he killed his first man, a man named Watson who had stolen a horse and engaged Bullock in a gunfight.
     Watson was eventually taken into custody by Bullock who had received a slight wound in his shoulder. As Watson was prepared to hang, a mob had appeared and scared off the man who was to do the hanging. Climbing the scaffold with shotgun in hand, he held off the mob, he himself pulled the lever which opened the trap door beneath Watson’s feet, causing him to hang.

     In 1876, Bullock and his business partner, Sol Star had a thriving hardware store business and decided to move the operation to the gold rush town of Deadwood South Dakota where they purchased a spit of property and set up shop as the “Office of Star and Bullock, Auctioneers and Commission Merchants,” first in a tent and then in a building which the two built.

     Now at the time of their arrival in Deadwood, it was thought of as nothing more than a mining camp and was lawless. As it sat within the Black Hills which was Indian Land and not considered at the time, part of the United States, panning for gold and criminal activities had been in chief business of the day. In fact, the day after their arrival in Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickcock was murdered by Jack McCall at the Number Ten Saloon where Hickcock was playing poker and sitting with his back to the door when McCall entered and shot him in the back of the head (That’s for another story) -  Following Hickcock’s murder, a demand for some type of law enforcement rose up in the camp and Bullock, with his background was the logical choice for Deadwood’s first sheriff.
     Eventually, having attained a bit of stability in Deadwood, operating a successful hardware business with his partner, Sol Star- and having the job as sheriff, Seth decided to bring his wife Martha and their daughter, Margaret to Deadwood, having a home built on Van Buren Street for them to live. Once in Deadwood, Martha and Seth had two more children, another daughter by the name of Florence and a son named Stanley. Adding to his stability in Deadwood, he and his business partner Star, also purchased a ranch where Redwater Creek and Belle Fourche River met which was known as the S&B Ranch Company, and Bullock was credited with introducing alfalfa farming to South Dakota in 1881. Later on, he became a U.S Marshall and partnered with Star and Franklin Harris in the Deadwood Flouring Mill as well as investing in mining.
     Seth Bullock had been friends with Teddy Roosevelt, then a deputy sheriff from Medora, North Dakota. It was in 1884 that the two met while bringing a horse thief known as Crazy Steve into custody near what would later become the town of Bell Fourche and became lifelong friends. Roosevelt would later say of his friend, “Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest type of frontiersman.”

     It was Bullock’s friendship with Roosevelt that led him to become a Captain in Troop A in Grigsby’s Cowboy Regiment of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War and although the troop never actually saw combat, he still earned the rank. And when Roosevelt became vice president under McKinley, he appointment Bullock as the first forest supervisor of the Black Hills Reserve...

     Bullock and Star’s Hardware store burned down in 1894 and rather than rebuilding, they chose to build Deadwood’s first true hotel on the site, a three story, 63-room luxury hotel with steam heat and indoor bathrooms on each floor, at a cost of $40,000.00. It was named after Bullock himself and continues to operate today...

     Seth Bullock died of colon cancer on September 23rd, 1919, in his home at 28 Van Buren Street. Six months prior to his death, Bullock work had started on a monument in Roosevelt’s honor on Sheep Mountain in Deadwood which is now called Roosevelt Hill. The memorial, including a friendship tower made of Black Hills stone, was dedicated just two months before Bullock died. It’s said that Bullock personally requested to be buried facing the memorial to his lifelong friend and the town of Deadwood didn’t let him down. They gave Bullock a right proper burial in a private little spot up a steep hill and down a long path, 750 feet away from the rest of the cemetery...

Tomorrow - Seth Bullock’s Ghost has been haunting his hotel for nearly a century!