Historic Bullock Hotel

Seth Bullock arrived in the Deadwood gold camp in August 1876 – a day after Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead at a poker table, if his own letter is to be believed – to open a hardware business with his partner Sol Star. When Lawrence County was created in 1877 he became its first sheriff, and he went on to become a rancher, the first forest supervisor of the Black Hills reserve, U.S. Marshal for South Dakota and a lifelong friend of Theodore Roosevelt.

After fire destroyed much of Deadwood, including the partners’ hardware store, in 1894, Bullock and Star built a three-storey stone hotel on the site at the corner of Main and Wall streets. Completed around 1896, it had 63 rooms, a grand lobby, a dining room and skylights to light the inner rooms, and it was the finest lodging in town. Over the 20th century its fortunes followed Deadwood’s: from 1976 the building served as a hardware store. After South Dakota legalised limited-stakes gambling in Deadwood in 1989, new owners restored it in 1991–93 as a hotel and casino, reducing the rooms to 28.

Bullock died of colon cancer on September 23, 1919, at his home on Van Buren Street in Deadwood, according to David A. Wolff’s biography Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman (2009), and was buried on the hillside above Mount Moriah Cemetery, facing the mountain he had dedicated to Roosevelt. A widespread story says he died in the hotel, in Room 211 – it is not true by any account, and the error may have helped the ghost stories along. Since the restoration, staff have described apparitions, a voice calling their names and a presence that seems to nudge idle workers back to their jobs, all attributed to the old sheriff still keeping an eye on his business.

The hotel leans into the legend: its own website says Bullock still “haunts” the halls, and it runs ghost tours. Paranormal investigators book its rooms, and in 2015 the hotel featured in a Halloween special of the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures.

Staff and guests report a tall figure in the restaurant and basement, apparitions and orbs, their names being called when no one is there, being touched, plates and glasses shaking or flying in the restaurant, lights, appliances and showers switching on by themselves, and items moved by unseen hands. Employees say activity increases when they stand idle, whistle or hum, as if the old owner were making sure they get back to work. No one claims the ghost has ever been threatening.

The second and third floors – especially Room 211, wrongly said to be where Bullock died – the main staircase, the basement and the restaurant named Bully’s after Roosevelt.

The hotel has appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, Ghost Adventures and other paranormal programmes, and Bullock gained a new generation of fans as a lead character in HBO’s Deadwood (2004–2006). Deadwood, a National Historic Landmark district, offers several ghost tours and marks Hickok, Calamity Jane and Bullock’s graves at Mount Moriah Cemetery.