The Smiths in Skagway

We come to the end of another day in Icy Alaska. When we first joined this tour, our tour guide, Bill asked us to set up a weather committee to see to it that we had good weather while we were in Canada and Alaska. We have clearly been doing a great job. Today in Skagway, with a permanent residency of just a couple of hundred people, we had sunshine, light breezes and reasonably clear skies. On running in to Bill while out and about today, he commented he has never taken a tour that had been so blessed with good weather.

We learned from one of our bus drivers today that Juneau, where we had been yesterday, had had such bad weather today that ships could not come and go. That was why two other cruise ships had joined us in Skagway. When we arrived here we were the only visitors. That was 1000 more people in town than live there. Later in the day when the second and third ships arrived and everybody had disembarked, there were 3000 more people in town. By that time we felt we had seen what Skagway had to offer and were returning to our ship. It was like salmon swimming against the stream. Thousands streamed towards us and we fought our way through them till we got on our gangplank, through the security gates and back to our cabin. Our timing was excellent. Skagway would have been awash with people.

Our trip into town began with a fun bus ride in an old school bus, led by an amusing and somewhat dry young woman called Valerie. The sites included the church, the former brothels, the bars, the icecream shop, a lemonade stand set up by children in a back street, the home of her ex-boyfriend, and the back yard of the minister of the First Presbyterian church who had been gutting a large halibut this morning and she was wondering when the barbecue would be starting. It was like taking a tour through a private house. We were shown the gardens of a nice old lady who grows lovely dahlias, someone who likes trains and the day care centre that cares for the very young and the very old in town. Nothing was off limits.

She told a story, and she and the woman who drove the second bus, acted bits of it out for us in an amusing little play. It was about someone of interest, a real scoundrel. But I have asked Ross to retell this story. Here he goes...

The lure of gold brought more than just honest miners and foolish adventurers to Skagway Alaska: it brought conmen like Soapy Smith, who preyed on the gullible. Now, I have no reason to believe that Soapy is a relative, but part of me wishes he were, because my family tree is in need of such colourful characters.

Jefferson Randolph Smith earned the name "Soapy" in his early years in the 1870 - 80s in Denver running the "soap game" scam. On a street corner he would open a box of wrapped soaps. He would make a big deal about unwrapping some soaps and placing money inside the wrapper, before rewrapping the soaps, and starting an auction. The first soap would be sold at an inflated price at auction, with the excited purchaser unwrapping the soap to find a $100 bill. Then the auction would take off. What the crowd did not realise of course was that every time that money was found, the purchaser was actually one of Soapy's colleagues who had been signalled to bid.

Now, where was a bright young man like Soapy to go: The goldfields in the Klondike.

In 1897 and 1898, Soapy and his gang of over 100 thugs ruled Skagway. Soapy ran crooked gambling halls, freight companies that hauled nothing, a telegraph company that had no lines out to the rest of the world, and an army enlistment tent where the victim's clothes and possessions were stolen while he was being checked by the "doctor". His men met newcomers at the docks, posing as clergymen, reporters, and knowledgable freight company representatives. He ran a parlour that would lure newcomers in with the promise that they could see the eagle he kept inside, only to be robbed. The thief would head out the back, being pursued, apparently disappearing into thin air in a completely fenced backyard. There was, of course, a disguised exit through the fence.

Soapy and his gang met their end in 1898 when they fleeced a miner, returning from the goldfields, of $2800 in nuggets. Instead of slinking away, a beaten man, the miner fired up the citizens of Skagway to clean up the town. A meeting was called, held eventually at the end of the jetty, somewhere near where the cruise ships now come in. Four men were placed on guard to keep undesirables such as Soapy out.

Soapy got wind of this, and after a day of heavy drinking, headed down there armed with his trusty Winchester rifle, only to be stopped by the four men, including a Mr Frank Reid, a civil engineer. In the confrontation that followed, four shots were fired: one by Soapy that struck Frank Reid in what we might delicately call "the groin", and three by Mr Reid, one of these piercing Soapy's heart killing him instantly. Soapy's body was left there for several days until some of the townswomen petitioned the authorities to have it carried away. Frank Reid was whisked away, a hero, to the infirmary, only to die a painful death 12 days later when the wound became infected.

A postscript to the story. The grateful citizens built an imposing monument to Mr Reid in the the gold rush cemetery that we visited. About 10 metres away is the grave of Soapy. So incensed were the citizens of Skagway, that a municipal order was given to excise Soapy's grave from the consecrated ground of the cemetery. They did so, without shifting his grave, by redrawing the boundaries of the cementery, with his grave just outside the new borders.

It was also subsequently discoved that Frank Reid may not have been quite the upright citizen, possibly being wanted for two murders back in America.

That was Ross' piece.

After throwing him this challenge, he was a force to be reckoned with. He sought out local experts, visited the local museum, watched a 25 minute movie and bought a book on the subject of Soapy Smith. When back on board he took the tablet device and wrote for ages, checking facts and figures on his camera from the museum to make sure he was not going to be as haphazard as me. I explained that it was about getting the idea of it and not being bound by too much detail. He scoffed!

Anyway, I happily brought in my washing which had been sitting on my balcony and was now dry, read some of the book I bought on the native peoples of Alaska (fascinating) and had a nap. Lots of walking this morning and I am finding the nap very good rebuilding time.

Skagway is so far away from anywhere else that they don't have much television because the satellite doesn't reach and internet is almost non existent. I overheard a woman in town trying to talk to someone on her phone and the signal kept failing. It would be a challenging place to live for someone who likes technology or who likes to stay in touch with what is happening in the world, but as our bus driver said, this is a town with one woman for every nine men, so life can get very interesting. Just be careful where you park your car overnight because everyone will know in the morning. It must be even more interesting in winter when they can get 23 minutes of direct sunlight a day. We are close to the Arctic circle after all.

Anyway, we have been told there there is a 3/10 chance of seeing the Aurora tonight. There was none visible last night despite several visits to the balcony during the night. I am fairly certain I will not see it because I think I see the weather from Juneau catching up with us. The clouds are thickening. Czytaj więcej