More retaining walls in Deadwood being repaired

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DEADWOOD (AP) — The Deadwood City Commission has approved money to shore up more historical retaining walls in the western South Dakota gambling town.

Nearly $400,000 had been spent on repairs as of the end of October, with more projects pending, the media reported. Last year, $586,000 was spent on the Retaining Wall Grant Program.

"Without this program, we would be losing historic resources. The gulch was built on cut and fills, so most historic structures in Deadwood have retaining walls," Historic Preservation Officer Kevin Kuchenbecker said. "They are important to ongoing protection of historic resources and in many cases, are historic themselves. Many of the walls we're repairing, replacing and reconstructing have been here 100 years."

Historic preservation is a priority for Deadwood, an Old West gold mining town that once was home to such well-known figures as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. The grant program to help shore up retaining walls on residential property is about 4 percent of the town's $7.1 million historic preservation budget.

The city has been through a couple of wet years, and that has led to more of the rock walls starting to fail, Kuchenbecker said.

"The wall itself must be determined an historic or contributing feature in the Deadwood National Historic Landmark District, typically built between 1876 and 1939," Kuchenbecker said. "And/or the wall's failure is threatening a historical resource or is a life safety issue."

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