Sol Star, circa 1916.

For your pleasure and information, the following is a paragraph excerpted from an extraordinarily well researched and written essay on Sol Star, mayor of Deadwood, South Dakota from 1884 to 1893. For the full story written by Stephen Vider for Nextbook, click here or go to:

http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=163

Riding Shotgun
Why does Deadwood's Sheriff wear a star with six points?

By Stephen Vider

Born in Bavaria in 1840, Solomon Star was sent to live with his uncle in Cincinnati at age 10. But it wasn't long after his 21st birthday that he picked up and headed west. He wound up in the Dakota Territory, in a Black Hills gold mining camp called Deadwood, and rose from hardware store operator to mayor, serving from 1884 to 1893. "He was very concerned about the welfare of the community," says Jerry Bryant, research curator at the Adams Museum and House in Deadwood, South Dakota. "Most of us who research him call him Saint Sol."

Bryant makes the real Sol Star sound every bit as gentlemanly as the character played by John Hawkes on Deadwood. In a town where corpses are fed to the pigs, Sol comes closest to being a true white hat.

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