Imagine: there used to be a time when people in one part of the world didn’t know a thing about what was going on in other parts of the world. News came by word of mouth, and for big city folk, news of happenings on the expanding Western frontier was exciting and exotic.

In 1904, the world at large got one of its first tastes of life in the Wild West when a photographic display called “Scenes in the Black Hills” was presented at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The display, featuring “mammoth glass plate transparencies” (really big glass plates with a tinted photographic images imposed on them) was created by the Detroit Photographic Company. They, like vendors at fairs today, were showing off to impress the masses. I suspect they succeeded.

Many of the scenes featured in the glass plates were photographs taken by a man named Clarence S. Jackson, who was commissioned by the Burlington & Missouri Railroad Company to take photos of scenes along the rail route. The black and white photos were then enlarged, transferred to glass plates and hand tinted.

On February 13th, the transparencies featuring Deadwood scenes will once again be unveiled, this time by the Deadwood Historic Preservation Committee. Though the transparencies were returned to Deadwood shortly after the 1904 World Fair, they faded into the background until 2005, when they were donated back to the City. Since then, the transparencies have been cleaned, restored, and duplicated.

To get a glimpse of Deadwood the way it was seen over a century ago, anyone is welcome to stop by Deadwood City Hall and see the new display. If you can make it this Wednesday at 5:00, experts will be on hand to discuss how the transparencies were restored and dated.