Deadwood tinkers with oft-taken trolley tokens

By Marla Loken, Special to the Journal | Monday, July 10, 2006

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DEADWOOD -- Deadwood's trolley tokens will be changing in the near future.

The new token design features a trolley and one of Deadwood's historic lamp posts on a cobblestone street. It will be a commemorative clay-composite decal inlay that resembles a $25 poker chip.

This is the first time the trolley token design has changed since 1989, the year of the town's trolley system inception. Bob Nelson Sr., director for the trolley system, said that tokens are sold for 50 cents and are good for one ride, but most of the tokens are bought by visitors to take home for souvenirs.

"You'd be surprised how many disappear. We've gone through 7,000 of them since 2004," Nelson said.

Punch cards for trolley rides are also available at a savings over the tokens: 12 rides for $5. The new punch-card system and the tokens were designed to relieve the city's finance department of the time and inconvenience of handling the large amounts of coin income from the trolleys.

The brass tokens that have been used since 1989 will no longer be available after the current supply is sold. Nelson said the cost of the brass has become too expensive, and he predicts that the original tokens will become a collector's item. Anyone interested in buying the historic Deadwood memorabilia should contact the Chamber of Commerce at 767 Main St., or call 578-1876.

Meanwhile, Nelson received notification from the South Dakota Department of Transportation that Deadwood has been awarded a grant to help buy a new trolley. State and federal funds will contribute 80 percent of the cost, with the city of Deadwood responsible for the remaining 20 percent. The cost for the new trolley is about $120,000.

The oldest trolley currently in use is a 2000 model that has an odometer reading of more than 120,000 miles. By the time it will be replaced with the new trolley, Nelson predicts it will have logged 150,000 miles and need to be retired.

Ridership for the Deadwood trolley system in 2006 is 107,429.