The $70,000 Claim That Hid 40 Million Ounces of Gold

The real history of Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickok's murder is stranger than HBO's Deadwood. At 4:15 pm on August 2, 1876, Hickok was shot holding aces and eights in a canyon town of 5,000 men that legally did not exist on the 60-million-acre Great Sioux Reservation promised forever in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The film traces Custer's 1874 gold discovery on French Creek, the illegal rush that built Deadwood Gulch, and the $70,000 Homestake claim that produced 40 million ounces from an 8,000-foot hole. It reveals why every Deadwood deed still has a blank where the treaty was.