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Much of Deadwood’s rich history is still very much alive for those of us who call the Gulch our home, and for those of you who pay us a visit. The natural beauty that surrounds us frames a colorful past of gambling and whiskey, gold mining and brothels, lawmen and badmen. But even with the valiant efforts of the community, led by our able Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission, so much has been lost.

Minor signposts of our past — such as board walks and hitching posts — have given way to paved sidewalks that appeal to modern sensibilities. Some of our history — such as the Native American presence and the Chinese influence — can be nearly invisible to the casual visitor. But Deadwood did not land once again in the Top 10 List of Western towns for nothing. Deadwood is putting its best historical foot forward this month as locals and guests alike are treated to an annual celebration of Chinese heritage.

Our very own Chinese New Year celebration will take place on Main Street on Saturday, March 7 and Sunday, March 8, courtesy of Historic Bullock Properties, owner of the Chinatown Café in Miss Kitty’s and the Chamber of Commerce. 2009 is the Year of the Ox and the festivities promise to be outsized as well. If you are reading this after the celebration is over, don’t despair. You can still catch a glimpse of a bygone era by glancing up at the Chinese cupola designed by Seth Bullock on top of the Bullock Hotel. A visit to the Adam’s Museum yields a treasure trove of artifacts lovingly preserved from the ruins of our Chinatown. Every July Deadwood’s own Chinese princess leads the Days of ‘76 parades. During the summer months tours of the last of the Chinese opium dens is offered right on Main Street. Truly, what has been lost has not been forgotten.

Part of our Chinese history, as is the case throughout the American frontier West and much of the world, was opium. Opium — the Black Smoke — was the drug of choice in a Victorian world, only to become a sharp edge of prejudice during the later ‘Chinese problem’ when we turned against this immigrant population during an economic downturn with its attendant unemployment. But the smuggling of opium into Deadwood Gulch beginning in 1876, its high value in the gold camp and wide range of customers is only a tiny blip on the long road back into opium’s secret history.

By 1876, the opium trade was a two-centuries-old, mighty economic engine that created fortunes still existent today. The first recorded international transport of the refined sap of the opium poppy was 200 chests of opium from the fertile poppy fields of eastern India to Macao, China by the Portuguese in 1700. Seventy-five years later the Honorable British East India Company was well into its opium business, smuggling more than 1,000 chests of opium from India to China annually. A chest of opium weighed 133 ? pounds and would net the smuggler a profit of 500 to 1,000 times the cost. The British East India Company and its noble investors reaped massive fortunes in the opium trade without sullying its reputation as an importer and exporter of fine teas.

In 1811, the first American smuggler from New England arrived in China with a load of Turkish opium, thus beginning the American involvement in the “secret business of opium.” Within 25 years, most of the opium smuggling around the world was run by the New England cartels. Boston fortunes were made by Dent & Company, Russell & Company and Jardine, Matheson & Company — fortunes that still run deep in the blue-blooded veins of New England. These various companies employed hundreds of men around the world, not just as seamen, but as a far-flung network of suppliers and ship builders. The ship yards of Baltimore and Boston thrived during the first half of the 19th century on the strength of opium smuggling.

The opium clippers from the Baltimore ship building yards became legends in their own time, rewriting the record books of travel. Loaded with hundreds of chests of opium, outrunning pirates, navies and each other, they reliably supplied the opium business with the contraband for more than 100 years. To this day, the opium clipper Frolic holds the sailing record from Bombay to Macao for a ship of its tonnage. The smuggler, although well-paid, lived a hard and dangerous life filled with pirates, typhoons, hostile Mandarins, deadly fevers, unknown plagues and the constant threat of capture. The fortunes of an opium smuggler — his hammock slung aboard an opium clipper — were even more harrowing and unsure than the shivering, hungry, gold prospector in his leaky tent, who eagerly awaited the product of that old forbidden trade.

By the last half of the 1800s, the opium trade shifted from China to the United States, first supplying the California Gold Rush, then the medical needs of the American Civil War and finally the opening of the frontier west in hundreds of mining and railroad construction camps. By the 1870s, most of the opium was smuggled into the United States through the Chesapeake Bay port located at Bladdensburg, Md., by members of the American opium cartels. From there, it secretly traveled west to the lawless frontier where its value was greater than the precious minerals extracted from the land. And that high price was paid by thousands of customers who found their comfort from the rigors of a hard life in the soothing Black Smoke.

In 1876, Deadwood was just the end of another smuggler’s secret journey; an opium run that probably started a year before in India, crossed an ocean and half a continent before its final destination in the bowl of an opium pipe in a den on Deadwood Gulch’s main street. To the Chinese merchants in the Gulch the opium trade was just another way to sell people what they wanted in order to earn money to send back to their homeland to feed their families. This Chinese New Year as you celebrate with the lion dancers, marvel at the martial artists, have your fortune told and eat Chinese delicacies, take a moment to remember a bit of Deadwood’s secret history and don’t forget that gold can come in many colors, and sometimes disappear in a puff of smoke.