Alias Soapy Smith

As the Klondike gold rush peaked in spring 1898, adventurers and gamblers rubbed shoulders with town-builders and gold-panners in Skagway, Alaska. The flow of riches lured confidence men, too—among them Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith (1860–98), who with an entourage of “bunco-men” conned and robbed the stampeders. Soapy, though, a common enough criminal, would go down in legend as the Robin Hood of Alaska, the “uncrowned king of Skagway,” remembered for his charm and generosity, even for calming a lynch mob. When the Fourth of July was celebrated in ’98, he supposedly led the parade. Then, a few days later, he was dead, killed in a shootout over a card game. With Smith’s death, Skagway rid itself of crime forever. Or at least, so the story goes. Journalists immediately cast him as a martyr whose death redeemed a violent town. In fact, he was just a petty criminal and card shark, as Catherine Holder Spude proves definitively in “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend, a tour de force of historical debunking that documents Smith’s elevation to western hero. In sorting out the facts about this man and his death from fiction, Spude concludes that the actual Soapy was not the legendary “boss of Skagway,” nor was he killed by Frank Reid, as early historians supposed. She shows that even eyewitnesses who knew the truth later changed their stories to fit the myth. But why? Tracking down some hundred retellings of the Soapy Smith story, Spude traces the efforts of Skagway’s boosters to reinforce a morality tale at the expense of a complex story of town-building and government formation. The idea that Smith’s death had made a lawless town safe served Skagway’s economic interests. Spude’s engaging deconstruction of Soapy’s story models deep research and skepticism crucial to understanding the history of the American frontier.

When the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897, Soapy Smith knew the tenderfeet headed for northern goldfields would be ripe for the picking, and chose raw, lawless Skagway as his headquarters. He built an empire that any Mafia don might envy. However, less than a year later, the town had had enough of Soapy. This is a rip-snorting portrait of the rise to power of a man without a conscience. It reveals the strong-arm robberies, bloody trail murders, illegitimate businesses, rigged card games, and garish, candle-lit honky tonks of the Gold Rush.

A gripping and wholly original account of the epic human tragedy that was the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98. One hundred thousand men and women rushed heedlessly north to make their fortunes; very few did, but many thousands of them (and their pack animals) died in the attempt. The electrifying announcement in 1897 that gold was to be found in wildly enriching quantities in the Klondike River region in remote Alaska was demonically well-timed to attract an exodus of economically desperate Americans. Within weeks, tens of thousands of them were embarking from western ports to throw themselves at some of the harshest terrain on the planet--in winter, yet--woefully unprepared, with no experience at all in mining or mountaineering. It was a mass delusion that quickly proved deadly. Brian Castner tells the unvarnished yet always striking and often amazing truth of this greed-fuelled migration.

In 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush brought thousands of hopeful prospectors to the North. With them came many scoundrels and swindlers who were willing to do whatever it took to separate unsuspecting targets from their hard-earned cash. No swindler was more successful at his craft than Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith, who ruled Skagway, Alaska with a quick hand and a scheming mind. This book explores his most outrageous escapades.

Throughout the development of the American West, prostitution grew and flourished within the mining camps, small towns, and cities of the nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest. Whether escaping a bad home life, lured by false advertising, or seeking to subsidize their income, thousands of women chose or were forced to enter an industry where they faced segregation and persecution, fines and jailing, and battled the hazards of disease, drug addiction, physical abuse, and pregnancy. They dreamed of escape through marriage or retirement, but more often found relief only in death. An integral part of western history, the stories of these women continue to fascinate readers and captivate the minds of historians today.

When asked in an interview what he most liked about rodeo, three-time world champion saddle-bronc rider “Cody” Bill Smith said simply, “Horses that buck.” Smith redefined the image of America’s iconic cowboy. Determined as a boy to escape a miner’s life in Montana, he fantasized a life in rodeo and went on to earn thirteen trips to the national finals, becoming one of the greatest of all riders. This biography puts readers in the saddle to experience the life of a champion rider in his quest for the gold buckle. Drawing on interviews with Smith and his family and friends, Margot Kahn recreates the days in the late 1960s and early 1970s when rodeo first became a major sports enterprise. She captures the realities of that world: winning enough money to get to the next competition, and competing even when in pain. She also tells how, in his career’s second phase, Smith married cowgirl Carole O’Rourke and went into business raising horses, gaining notoriety for his gentle hand with animals and winning acclaim for his and Carole’s Circle 7 brand. Inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1979 and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2000, Smith was a legend in his own time. His story is a genuine slice of rodeo life—a life of magic for those good enough to win. This book will delight rodeo and cowboy enthusiasts alike.

Using a unique and ground-breaking approach that combines religion with American history, these four authors masterfully present a thoroughly researched and captivating account of fifty-two inspirational stories of America’s exceptionalism intricately woven with God’s truths. Each story connects the life-giving honesty of the American people with a life-shaping application from the gospel. Individuals interested in the history of the United States or Christianity and looking for an overarching account of what unites us as Americans and believers will be enthralled by these inspiring stories of struggles and triumphs. We are not the light, just the reflection if we stand close enough to the Source. The further we move away from God’s will for our lives, the more we stumble in the dark. But as believers we know there is an all-powerful force that will lift us up and help us to walk in the light. The goal of God’s Reflections: Biblical Insight from America’s Story is to draw Christians closer to the light source, so they can radiate brighter in their service to God and their country and be part of the greatest rescue mission of all: making disciples for Jesus Christ!