When I first started doing research into local history here in Sturgis, I gravitated to Poker Alice. There were a few reasons for that. One, I’ve always enjoyed doing research on women of the wild west. Their stories are often incredible, yet they don’t get the coverage that others do. Two, I thought it would be an easy way to step into local history. After all, she is a well-known character, and my assumption was that she had been well researched. That proved to be incorrect.
The third reason is more logistical in nature. History is expansive. Narrowing down the scope can help, but even when just looking at local history, one is looking at centuries of time, multitudes of peoples, what can appear to be a near infinite number of events.
Finding an anchor can help center a person within that immense mess. So why is Poker Alice a good candidate when it comes to an anchor?
What is first attractive about Alice as an anchor is that seemingly she was a larger than life character whose life was intermingled with many individuals and events. That would turn out to be a false assumption, as the story of her life, as commonly told, is more fiction than fact.
However, she was connected enough as to introduce new events, new situation, new characters into the historical dialogue. From those new points, that web of history can continue to spread outwards. If there is more than one anchor point, eventually these webs can start to intermix, and a larger picture will eventually form. The hope is that this intermingling of webs will also influence each other, making portions of the picture more accurate.
That’s not to say this is the only manner to proceed with history. My intent is to create a thorough history of Sturgis and the Black Hills. Using anchors to do this will eventually paint an entire picture, but it’s a picture that isn’t straightforward.
The history presented in this manner isn’t in chronological order. Instead, the history is presented as snapshots spread out over the timeline. So there are gaps in the record, which will eventually be filled. But for the time being, it can be a bit frustrating.
As this project continues to move forward, we hope to continue chipping away at the frustration, while building up the entire picture.