Deadwood Dick

For the 1940 serial, see Deadwood Dick (serial).

Deadwood Dick is a fictional character who appears in a series of stories, or "dime novels", published between 1877 and 1897 by Edward Lytton Wheeler (1854/5-1885). The name became so widely known in its time that it was used to advantage by several men who actually resided in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Those who took the nickname included:

• Nat Love (1854 – 1921), an African-American cowboy;
• Dick Brown, an actor;
• Richard Cole, a stage coach driver;
• Richard Clarke, also an actor; the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce asked him in the 1920s to portray Deadwood Dick in the city's annual Days of '76 Parade. Clarke died May 5, 1930.[1]
• Cornishman Richard Bullock, gunman and bullion guard on the Deadwood Stage (1847 - 1921).

Others more briefly associated with the name were Richard Palmer, who died in Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1906, and Robert Dickey, who died in a Denver hospital jail in 1912.

External links

• Deadwooddicks.com
• Northern Illinois University Library.edu