Redyard Kipling once wrote,

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the Twain shall meet.

But that all changed in the mid to late 1800s when thousands of immigrants flocked to the

new frontier in search of an opportunity, a golden one, you might say. It started with the 1848

California Gold Rush. Soon though, miners were seeking other states to find their fortunes. They

arrived in South Dakota on sacred Lakota land. As you might imagine, people stealing indigenous

property caused quite a few skirmishes.

By 1868, the Treaty of Fort Laramie ensured that everyone knew that the Black Hills of

South Dakota belonged to the indigenous people already living there.

But settlers thought that if the Lakota people considered the Black Hills sacred, it had

to have some sort of value other than spiritual.

Then, in 1874,

Lieutenant Colonel George Custer found gold along the French Creek. Naturally, word got out and caused a sudden influx of fortune hunters. American and Chinese miners from California

quickly set up camp that they named Deadwood after a number of fallen

trees found in a nearby gulch. But Deadwood's reputation as a place of lawlessness grew as

quickly as the population, which swelled to over 5,000. The next big growth spurt happened when a pair of

brothers found one of the largest veins of gold-bearing ore in American history.

As a result, Deadwoods skyrocketed from 5,000 to 25,000. Murders became common. Opium was

freely traded, fights broke out regularly, and while settlers clashed with each other, they also had

plenty of run-ins with the Lakota tribes and the Chinese prospectors.

For familiarity and protection, these Chinese miners formed a tight-knit community

that other settlers referred to as Chinatown. These immigrants established businesses that

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