DEADWOOD - Legend has it that Seth Bullock, Deadwood's first sheriff, drew a line in the gold rush town's dusty main street.

On one side of the line stood the area known as the Badlands, the rip-roaring side of frontier Deadwood, full of gambling and vice. On the other stood upper Main Street and those doing their level best to bring peace and civility to a lawless town. Bullock's message was clear: Stay on your side, and we'll stay on ours.

Still, both sides of Deadwood jostled shoulders. They lived, perhaps not in perfect harmony, but bound together by their desire to forge a living in the small, wooded valley that cradles the town.

More than a century later, that conflicted but close relationship continues to echo in Deadwood, although it's something many visitors might not see at first glance.

Deadwood, a popular destination for travelers near and far, was ranked nearly last on a recently published list of historical sites. Reviewers from National Geographic Traveler magazine say they were looking for well-preserved, authentic historical sites where a tourist could travel back in time. To them, that wasn't Deadwood.

"Hokey and relatively unpleasant," the magazine's reviewers decided. "A tourist spend-a-day destination. Maybe that's just a modern version of what it has always been, a place for rubes to drop a few bucks."

Printed in the magazine's November-December 2008 issue, the reviewers decried Deadwood's noisy slot machines, modern building interiors and the lack of authentic mining and ranching activities nearby.

It may not be immediately obvious to a tourist or magazine writer stepping off a bus, but the town's compromise between history, civility and vice isn't a new phenomenon. As the years passed in Deadwood, some businessmen wanted to move on from the town's wild past. But others realized Deadwood's history was its own sort of gold mine.

Copying a legend already established in dime novels, some businessmen pushed to bury Calamity Jane next to Wild Bill Hickok in 1903 to confirm the tale of her true love. Others in the community arranged the annual Days of '76 event in the early 1920s.

"They kind of had this sense of the importance of the history," said Mary Kopco, director of the Adams Museum & House in Deadwood. "This was one of the last great gold rushes."

As time went on, it became obvious that tourism was the key to the town's economic future. In 1980, authorities shut down the town's brothels. Many residents protested, waving signs saying "save our tail," but the whores' doors remained shut.

It was a blow to a small- town economy soon slammed far worse. Jobs disappeared as the mining industry took hits and shopping dollars left Main Street as Rapid City grew into the area's retail magnet. Deadwood was struggling.

In 1987, fire swept through the Syndicate Block downtown, and after a few minutes, volunteer firefighters ran out of water, and town residents watched for hours as the block burned.

"Deadwood was going down, and it was burning down, and we couldn't put the fires out," said Dave Larson, owner of Deadwood Dick's Saloon and Gaming Hall and an advocate of both historic preservation and the return of gambling.

The fire sparked Larson, his wife, Mary, and others to push for a return to a vice of Deadwood's past, and the blaze was used in a promotional video. In 1989, state residents legalized gambling in the town, with the condition that some funds go toward the town's historical preservation. After all, the entire town was a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.

Within a few years, the hands of poker and the jingle and clang of slot machines brought money to the town. The city of Deadwood's take totaled almost $5 million in the first full year of gambling, and more than $7 million in the year ending this June.

With the money in hand, residents began to rebuild its crumbling historic center and fix such things as the water supply system, which surrendered in the face of the fires that consumed the Syndicate Block and other historic buildings in the days before gambling.

"Because of gaming, we were able to rebuild the infrastructure," said Louie Lalonde, a co-owner of the Old Style Saloon No. 10 in downtown Deadwood.

Nearly 20 years later, much of the downtown is rebuilt, with some shiny new buildings and old structures carefully restored to their original look, at least on the outside.

But some say the gambling that resurrected Deadwood and restored its historic face also took part of the town's soul.

Contractors rearranged building interiors to connect golden rows of electronic gambling devices. High-traffic carpet covered the floors. Several times a day, Wild Bill Hickok gets shot and his murderer put on trial. Hours later, the re-enactors do it again for another crowd of tourists. Other faux gunfighters shoot to kill twice a day against an odd backdrop of cars, camera-clicking tourists and the restored Victorian-era downtown.

Although the Hickok re-enactment gives tourists a ticket to the past, museum director Kopco isn't a big fan of the other gunplay.

"I'm not real crazy about the gunfights. It's not living history," she said. "People were smarter than to sit around on the street shooting each other, and that really didn't happen to any degree in Deadwood."

Deadwood's survival might have come at a cost, but the trade-off was worth it, said Larson. Deadwood's situation was dire, and the town needed more than the money from a bake sale. The town needed a plan and serious cash. Larson and others forged the plan, and gambling provided the cash.

"We rubbed the money and the plan together, and this is what you've got," he said.

"You can't have one without the other; you have to have both working."

Like the day Sheriff Bullock drew a line in the dirt, Deadwood is again a town of two sides. It's a living, breathing thing where good jostles shoulders with bad. It's no Las Vegas, but neither is it a living museum with historically accurate re-enactors such as Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

"We're not of that nature; we're a different animal here," Larson said. "This is organic preservation - not static, unmoving, not-operating."

At its heart, the town and its residents have done what it takes to survive, to make payroll and pay the utility bills. Critics of the new version of old Deadwood might call that money-hungry and claim the town's historic preservation is often the first victim of the wrecking ball and the focus on the slot machines. That focus often bypasses historical sites such as Seth Bullock's grave, Mount Roosevelt and the longest railroad tunnel blasted in the Black Hills, said Jerry Bryant, a historian, archaeologist and research consultant at the Adams Museum.

"There's so much history that's just ignored," he said. "There's so much here you haven't heard of because it doesn't bring in the bucks downtown."

Deadwood supporters attacked the National Geographic magazine's reviewers as unthinking snobs who didn't make it past Main Street. George Milos, executive director of the town's chamber of commerce, and other residents claim the reviewers ignored the town's wealth of activities and historic preservation projects such as the Adams House, built in 1892 and restored with the help of gambling money.

Yet there's no avoiding the fact that the downtown area is now a tourist mecca targeted at those who want a steak, a beer and a bucket of gambling tokens, Bryant said.

But the money tourists brought into the town has underwritten a new life for many historic structures and made it possible for something of a reconstruction of Deadwood's fabled history.

That past is Deadwood's present. The town's story is one of a free pass - a wink here, a nod there - given to vice to ensure Deadwood's survival as an otherwise good-hearted town nestled among the hills. Or, as the magazine article said, just a place for a rube to drop a few bucks.

For good or bad, those bucks carved today's Deadwood.

Contact Jeremy Fugleberg at 394-8421 or Jeremy.fugleberg@rapidcityjournal.com