Word: skagway
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Only a few summer tourists now go to Skagway, Alaska, but at the height of the Yukon gold rush (1897-98) 75,000 of them tumbled hopefully ashore to seek their fortune or somebody else's. Today Skagway is a ghost town, but one of its ghosts has left his mark-a 30-ft. skull carved on the face of a cliff. That is Skagway's memorial to Soapy Smith...
...Though Skagway was his last resting place, Denver still remembers Jefferson Randolph Smith as one of the most picaresque figures of its bad old days. A slight, dapper, persuasive man, with a silver tongue and a front of brass, his original racket was selling soap on the street. He sold two kinds: in one pile an ordinary "miracle-working" soap, at 25? a cake; in the other, bars at five dollars, whose wrappers enfolded an occasional banknote. The crowd of suckers could see Soapy wrapping his wares in real money, sometimes a $50 bill, but somehow none but his confederates...
When gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek in Canada's Yukon Territory, Skagway became the port of entry for the trek up over White Pass toward sudden wealth. Friends warned Soapy Alaska would be a tough proposition, but to Soapy it looked like his big chance. With his time-tested crew of bunco-steerers, con men and cappers he started a saloon in Skagway, set out to captivate that leaderless town. He did it, but it was hard going. The thugs and strong-arm men he could not control gave Skagway such a bad name that the law-&-order...
...Klondike River, in Canada's Yukon Territory, was the place to go for gold. As the summer neared its close the trail from the fields down through White Pass to the Alaskan port of Skagway was a jostling procession of prospectors. On Aug. 13 the Islander, 240-ft. pride of the Skagway-Victoria Line, steamed out of port with a 61-man crew, 108 passengers, a dozen stowaways, began threading its way through the narrow straits. At 2 a. m., when most of the passengers had reeled off to bed, the Islander hit something with a mighty impact, sank...
...Henderson sailed once more. Contrary to schedule she put in at Skagway. Skagway is now a village of about 500 inhabitants but once it had 20,000 people and was the starting point of the famous White Horse Trail in the days of the great gold rush to the Yukon. The President went to the chief hotel and delivered a short address, reviewing the history of the town. Mrs. Harding was presented with a bouquet of dahlias, each flower almost a foot in diameter. There the President became a member of the Arctic Brotherhood and took an oath never...