| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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When the silver was pretty much all mined out in Creede, Soapy looked for more miners to fleece and found them in the Alaska Gold Rush. By this point he has acquired a whole gang of followers.
One of Soapy's first actions was to set up a traveler's aid and information desk. His people told newcomers about Skagway in a likable friendly fashion. At the same time they were sizing up people for robbery, finding out who had money and where they had it hidden. If you warn people about how dangerous a place is and warn them to hide their money well, they often will confide how and where they are hiding their valuables. Soapy would arrange as many as ten robberies in a single night.
Some miners got tired of the life and when the army opened an enlistment office in a tent, miners would come and enlist. They would be told to strip down to be examined by army doctors in another tent. The funny thing is the doctor never showed up. Finally they would go back to get their clothes and belongings and find they were gone too.
Then there was a shack set up as a telegraph office. Miners would pay $5 to send telegraph messages to their families to say they had arrived safely. Many were also willing to pay $5 to get a message from home. They could hear the message being tapped out. It didn't matter that none of Soapy's men knew Morse code, of course, since there were no telegraph wires leading from the shack anyway.
Occasionally Soapy Smith proved himself to have higher motives. One day a clergyman was collecting money for a new church. Soapy amazed everybody by starting the contributions with $1000. Based on this contribution the clergyman collected $36,000. Soapy robbed the minister and then bragged that 36 to 1 was a good bet.
Smith ruled Skagway for nine months. Locals who got tired of being fleeced formed a vigilante group 'The Committee of 101' to chase Soapy out of town. Soapy formed his 'Committee of 303' to intimidate the first committee.
On miner fleeced of $2800 got angry and went to the Committee of 101. The local surveyor, Frank Reid, headed a group of vigilantes who chased down Smith. Reid had shot a man in the back and later he had come to Skagway and held different jobs, including bartender. While at this job he found surveyor's tools left in the bar and decided he was now the town surveyor. He also was the staunchest opponent of Soapy Smith. As we will see later Reid and Smith ended killing each other. At Soapy's funeral, some say that someone threw three shells and a pea onto the body. Perhaps Soapy would have liked the touch.
Anyway, that is Soapy Smith. The huge dilemma of how to get over the mountains was solved when one Michael J. Henney built a railroad that would go over the White Pass. That was absolutely an amazing feat. The trail that was so terrible it killed thousands of horses could be traversed by sitting back and enjoying the view from a train. But Henney got the idea a little too late. He missed his real window of opportunity. By the time the railroad was ready the Yukon gold strike was petering out and gold was discovered in Nome. The demand dropped way off. But the White Pass Railroad still runs runs from Skagway to White Horse-mostly for tourists.
I woke up at 4am and could not get back to sleep. One nice touch is the light by the bed has a variable switch (really a knob). You can turn it to very dim if you, like so I can lie in bed and write without disturbing Evelyn. Much.
After breakfast we headed out on foot to see Skagway. We were docked only a mile from town and it didn't seem to be even that much. We were birthed at the very docks first built by Captain William Moore, the founder of Skagway. We had arranged for a horse ride that afternoon, but had nothing to do but see the town in the morning. We set out toward town, passing the painted rocks. Docked ships used to paint on the rocks messages of when they had been there. The rocks, after all, were just rocks. As the years rolled by the locals began to worry that vintage graffiti was worth more than the recent stuff and a local law was instituted to protect the valuable old graffiti from the ravages of newer stuff. At the end of the dock the local tour-givers hung around at the end of the docks waiting to pounce, selling cut-priced tours for those who had unaccounted-for time. They were are lot cheaper than the tours sold by the Princess Lines. (Surprise! Surprise!) We were quite willingly pounced upon and bought a tour of the area.
Into town we walked, two innocents, expecting to see only what anyone would expect. Just a colorful old town turned into a sort of tourist trap with upscale shops, and maybe a museum or two and the like. Ho-ho, what fools we were, little thinking that there might be anything unusual ahead of us. But as it turned out in this case we were absolutely right.
There was a nice but small museum of the gold rush run by the National Parks Department. Most memorably was a relief of the mountains that guarded the beginnings of the Trail of '98. (And I guess after they guarded it so well, they needed some relief.) Here they showed you the two paths over the Chilkoot Trail or the White Pass-which ever way you go you wish you'd taken the other. White to the right deteriorated under the crush of travelers, Chilkoot to he left had golden stairs. The exhibits talked about the hardship of having to carry a year's supply of goods-the ruling was good for men but bad for the horses that had to do all the hauling. Later we saw from a distance Soapy Smith's old headquarters, an unprepossessing cracker-box of a building.
There was some overlap of material with the Trail of '98 Museum. Walking through it we saw kitchen goods like a coffee grinder, the inevitable stuffed bear, relics of the warm relations of the fraternal organization, the Arctic Brotherhood. There were various pieces of gambling paraphernalia like a wheel of fortune and some early slot machines.
The Red Onion Saloon is still present like the Red Dog we saw the day before. Red is the color of low-brow and rambunctious fun for, uh, rednecks. This was a the local hostile hostelry offering a line of bad beverages, all with a high alcohol content. However bad the drinks were, and there is little record, the women were worse, and their pictures on the wall do record what they looked like. One look at the mugs on these women will tell you more than John Maynard Keynes ever did about how short supply increases demand.
When the time came for our tour we went and waited in front of the hotel. A woman found us and asked if we were waiting for the tour. Apparently we were the only ones on the tour who had actually come into Skagway to see the town and walk the streets before the real tour began. Everyone else had joined it on the docks. And we were rewarded by getting the seats at the very back of the bus that had a view of the mountains on the left and a view of the bus's out-of-order bathroom on the right.
We started on Old Juneau Wharf and drove through town. We again saw Smith's parlor and H. E. Hegg's photography studio. Hegg was a Swedish immigrant who tied goats to a dogsled and set up his darkroom on the sled. Some of the most famous scenes of the Gold Rush were photographed by him including the long narrow line of men climbing over the Golden Stairway. There were dozens of saloons with alcohol in town during the rush, in spite of the fact it was illegal. We were also pointed out some 'houses of negotiable affection.' From one of these came the madam, Pea Hole Annie, so named because she made herself rich with hollow peas. When prospectors would pay in gold dust, she palmed a pea which she used to scoop up more than her share of gold dust. The City Hall was originally a college for girls, but it closed for lack of interest in education for women. Even today the town with a population of 700 has no doctor. It has two doctor's assistants assisting nobody. If you really need a doctor, and with the cholesterol in the food you just might, you have to be airlifted to a doctor. Then on the positive side the closest McDonalds is 200 miles away. A lot sells for $15,000, and you would spend $175,000 for a home.
Our first stop was to Gold Rush Cemetery. Smith who three days before his death was leading the Fourth of July Parade could not even be buried in the cemetery and is just outside of it. Smith had made good friends and fierce enemies. He was, by most accounts a man of great charm. We were told in a little more detail than we had before about his death. J. D. Stewart, a prospector came into town with $2800 in gold dust. He went to two fake assaying offices, neither giving him a fair price, but both saying that Jeff Smith gave the best prices in town. Going to Smith's to get his gold valued he handed the gold to the man in charge who took it and headed straight for the door. Stewart went after him, but the other men pretended that Stewart was drunk and slowed him down so the gold got away. Stewart when to complain to the Town Marshall, the Town Marshall was one of Smith's men also and told Stewart his best course would be to go back to the Klondike and dig another $2800. Stewart was not ready to do any such thing. Instead he told everybody he saw that Jeff Smith was a crook and a cheat. He became a rallying point for the those in the town that opposed Smith and even Smith's own men were afraid that they were getting too famous too fast. Smith turned stubborn and insisted that they would continue business as usual. People who had been apathetic about Smith in the past were joining in the forces who wanted to get rid of him. Smith found his support was diminishing and did something he almost never did, he got himself drunk. Then he went to the angry rally that vigilante leader Frank Reid was having on the docks. 'Damn you, Reid, you are the cause of all my troubles. I should have gotten rid of you three months ago.' With that Soapy Smith pulled a gun and aimed it point blank at Reid's head. Reid grabbed the barrel and pulled it down as he pulled his own gun out. 'Don't shoot. For God's sake, don't shoot,' yelled the suddenly frightened Smith. Reid pulled the trigger but his gun only clicked. That was enough for Smith and he fired, now shooting through Reid's groin. Then both men fired. Reid was shot in the leg, but Smith was hit in the heart. Both fell and Reid got another shot into Smith's leg, but Smith was already near death. He was the lucky one. Reid lived on in agony for many days before his wounds killed him. His epitaph reads 'He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.' Smith lay on the dock for eight hours before anybody lifted a hand to take him away. (This description is based as much on the on in the book THE KLONDIKE FEVER by Pierre Berton as on the description given on the tour. But the Berton book seems to be a respected source on the Klondike stampede.)
Reid's and Smith's graves are the main attraction of the cemetery. We were told about some of the locals, but they certainly don't stack up to Smith in legend-value. One ran the trolley, one was a train dispatcher.
The name Skagway means 'home of north wind.' The Indians would name the area but did not like it. It was a cold and desolate place to cross the mountains until the railroad was built. 35,000 men worked on railroad to bring in miners and to take out the gold. It took a year to build the railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse. Before then 4000 horses died on the Dead Horse Trail. After the struggle to get up over the pass it was just the most difficult piece that was done, they still would have 550 miles to go. The miners would build rafts to float to the Yukon. The tour took us over the pass and showed us the valley beyond.
Part of the tour was discussion of the White Pass Railroad, whose tracks the road followed. Also it was a drive over the White Pass itself.
As I said elsewhere only a small handful of people really did well off the Klondike strike. There were less than 50 men who struck gold and stayed wealthy. There were some personal fortunes made that we still see today. |
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