Home to the graves of famous Western figures such as Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, and Sherriff Seth Bullock, Mount Moriah Cemetery is located in the nineteenth-century gold mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Prior to Mount Moriah’s establishment in 1878, Deadwood residents used an area of town known as Whitewood Gulch to bury their dead.

In 1877, the Lawrence County Board of Commissioners decided to replace the burial ground, known as Ingleside Cemetery, with a formal, regulated town cemetery. Most of the graves at Ingleside were reinterred at Mount Moriah following the cemetery’s opening the following year.

Years of neglect and poor record-keeping at the cemetery led the formation of the Deadwood Cemetery Association in 1893. The association acquired the deed to the cemetery land in addition to the responsibility for its upkeep and finances, including the sale of grave plots to the Deadwood community. In 1938, the Cemetery Association transferred ownership of Mount Moriah back to the City of Deadwood.

The most popular tourist attraction at Mount Moriah Cemetery is Wild Bill Hickock’s gravesite. Hickock’s grave was among those transferred from Ingleside to Mount Moriah. Due to Hickock’s notoriety as a gunslinger, tourists, souvenir hunters, and vandals have damaged several memorials at his gravesite, including a statue and a bust of Hickock.

Researched, written, and narrated by University of West Florida Public History Student Stephanie Powell