Deadwood Dick
The original Deadwood Dick was an entirely fictional character, created by Edward Lytton Wheeler in a series of cheap novels, known as dime novels, in the late nineteenth century. Wheeler never visited the Black Hills, never walked the streets of Deadwood, and spent most of his career as a writer of dime novels and plays in Philadelphia. In the months after the Custer defeat at the Little Big Horn, the general public was entranced by the Black Hills, and Deadwood Dick became wildly popular. Wheeler wrote more than thirty novels featuring the character, about half of which also featured Calamity Jane, after Wheeler met her through Buffalo Bill Cody.
The moniker – probably due to its alliteration – became popular as well, and several real-life characters chose to adopt it, most of them either con artists or political aspirants. Probably the most well-known Deadwood Dick of his day was Frank Palmer, who actually went to Deadwood and supported himself there by gambling. His obituary claims he was dubbed Deadwood Dick by fellow gamblers, though the nature of gambling at the time, during the heyday of Deadwood’s lawless years, makes such a friendly christening unlikely. Deadwood Dick was reinvented as a film serial in the 1940s, as a masked hero a la the Lone Ranger, in pursuit of law and justice on the Dakota frontier.