Adams Museum & House

I also want to say that the new “Digging Chinatown” exhibit is very well done, and absolutely worth seeing.

As my husband and I were walking back to our office from lunch one day, we noticed a bit of a commotion outside the Adams Museum. It didn’t take long to find out that they were in the middle of “installing” their new mountain lion. We decided to go in and see.

The new mountain lion – “procured” during the previous hunting season – had just been given a place of honor in one of the displays. He is an impressive creature, large and wild, stuffed expertly so he appears to be on the prowl, dark eyes staring right back at you.

That was all very well and good until I spotted the old mountain lion. He was old in every possible sense of the word. I believe he’d been there for nearly as long as the museum has been around, and whoever stuffed him was either new to the art of taxidermy or was having a bad day. Primarily, I refer to the poor old lion’s haircut. Someone had seen fit to go after him with a clipper, or shaver perhaps. The result was that he looked sick and a little pathetic, as if he’d caught some terrible disease. Perhaps he had.

In any case, I think the lion is a pretty good metaphor for the whole city of Deadwood. It’s old, it’s gone through a few rather scruffy phases, and now it’s been revitalized so that not only does it look better, but you can get a better idea of what it looked like in its past glory. (Or “glory,” considering.)