Cheyenne & Deadwood Stage Route

Cheyenne and Deadwood Stage Route. . , From 1876 to 1887, the Cheyenne and Deadwood Stage Route connected the Union Pacific Railroad with the gold mining regions in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. A portion of this route once passed the location before you. In its heyday, this route was approximately 350 miles long and took up to 50 hours to travel one way. Though the route only lasted eleven years, thousands of passengers, tons of freight and millions of dollars in gold travelled along the trail. The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Company became one of the primary companies who managed the different routes that were once part of the trail system. An original stagecoach that once transversed the Cheyenne and Deadwood Stage Route is on permanent display at the Days of 76 Museum in Deadwood. , Bandits and road agents were a constant threat along this route. One of the most notorious hold-ups occurred approximately two miles from this interpretive sign along todays US Highway 385 South. On the night of March 25, 1877, five masked road agents attempted to hold up the Cheyenne and Black Hills stage coach. Newspaper accounts of the day stated that, ”in the commotion to stop the stagecoach, driver Johnny Slaughter was shot and killed by Robert McKimie, alias “Little Reddy, from Texas". One year later, McKimie was apprehended by none other than frontier lawman Seth Bullock in Hillsboro, Ohio. Before McKimie was identified as the murderer, the adjacent warrant poster was dispersed throughout Dakota Territory. , This interpretative panel was developed using funds from the 2014 - 2016 South Dakota Department of Transportation US Highway 85 reconstruction project..