Preacher Smith of Deadwood Gulch

This 1975 bronze tells the life the obelisk beside it leaves out. Henry Weston Smith became a Methodist exhorter at twenty-three, served in the Union Army and qualified as a doctor, then walked into the Black Hills in 1876 to preach with no church sending him. He held the first service there, at Custer on May 7, and kept himself with manual labor while he preached on Deadwood's main street. The bronze gives his birth as January 10, 1828; his own records say 1827.

What the plaque says

Preacher Smith of Deadwood Gulch "Deadwood's Sky Pilot," Henry Weston Smith, was born in Ellington, Connecticut, January 10, 1828. At 23 he became a Methodist exhorter. This led to ordination in the Methodist Episcopal church and he served various communities in New England. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union Army. Caring for the wounded may have turned his mind to healing, for he studied the practice of medicine and was licensed in 1867. In 1876 he joined the great rush to these Black Hills -- not to mine gold, but to claim lives for God. Reading and writing poetry eased his loneliness. During the week he performed manual labor to send savings to his family in Kentucky and to sustain himself as he preached on Deadwood's main street. On Sunday, August 20, 1876, after service in Deadwood, he tacked a note on his cabin door saying he had gone to Crook City to preach. On the way he was shot. In his pocket were the notes, now blood- stained, for the undelivered sermon. His Bible lay unopened. The Society of Black Hills Pioneers erected this monument in 1914 near where he was killed. Today his body lies in Mt. Moriah Cemetery overlooking Deadwood. South Dakota State Historical Society and Society of Black Hills Pioneers

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Deadwood Historic District — 2.0 mi
  A gold-rush town on treaty land, rebuilt in brick after the 1879 fire and rescued a century later by a vote to let casinos pay for its preservation.
• Mount Moriah Cemetery — 2.0 mi
  The hillside where Deadwood moved its dead: Wild Bill and Calamity Jane side by side, Seth Bullock looking at his friend's tower, and the Chinese burner of 1908.
• Homestake Open Cut & Sanford Lab Visitor Center — 4.2 mi
  A 1,250-foot pit on Lead's Main Street, the visible top of a gold mine that went down 8,000 feet in 125 years and is a physics laboratory now.
• Spearfish Canyon — 11 mi
  A limestone canyon nineteen miles long whose waterfalls ran dry for most of a century while the Homestake piped their water to its power plants.

More markers nearby

• Henry Weston Smith — steps away
• First Deadwood Gold Discovery — 1.3 mi
• 1940 DAR Penny Pines Forest — 1.6 mi
• Second Deadwood Gold Discovery — 3.1 mi