Skagway “error

The remarkable story of “Soapy Smith,’ Skagway’s

OLD tn the Klondyke!

Lord of Misrale.

Gleaming yellow gold for the taking!

From

the ends of the earth a motley multitude surged northward, all bent on
wresting from the bosom of Mother Earth the dynamic metal which

spelled affluence and riches.

From habitant homes in Quebec came swarthy

French-Canaditans to mingle with gold-crazed sons of Broadway and the
Bronx, Cockneys from distant London, mackinaw-clad miners and glamorous

sirens from ’Frisco’s Barbary Coast; all northward bound.

By

PHILIP H. GODSELL
IIR Gus se RiIG) SS

*

KAGWAY, port of entry to this
promised land, sprawled in scat-
tered disarray in the shadow of

Alaska’s saw-toothed mountains, gazed
with increasing wonder at the hetero-
geneous horde of mixed humanity
that the overcrowded and _unsea-
worthy ships continued to spill ashore
along its crowded waterfront.

From that July day in 1897, but a
few short months before, when the
Excelsior had casually unloaded
nearly $1,000,000 worth of gold and
nuggets on the waterfront at San
Francisco, the stampede had started.
Then the Portland had docked at
Seattle and discharged another ton of
yellow gold from the Klondyke dig-
gings. And from the inflammatory
spark ignited by this news commenced
the greatest gold-rush the world had
ever known.

Not all the Argonauts, however,
who descended in their teeming thou-

“Soapy’’ Smith in his saloon, “Jeff's Place,’ headquarters for the nefarious gang
who ruled the town of Skagway.

sands upon astonished Skagway were
armed with pick and shovel and gold-
pan.

Mingling with the seething
multitudes who planned to dig
for gold was an army of parasites
who intended to fatten on the
toil of others. There were glib-
tongued confidence-men, fugitives
from justice, tin-horn gamblers,
and ladies of easy virtue who
smiled with painted lips and
Madonna-like faces on the red-
shirted men they hoped to mulct
of their hard-earned wealth.

HOUSING IN KITIMAT BY

Straits Construction Limited

14th Floor, Georgia Hotel Bldg., Vancouver 1, B.C.

*

Slim, debonair, black-bearded Jefter-
son Randolph Smith, or “Soapy
Smith” as he had come to be known
around the gold camps of California,
was skulking in a reformed Denver,
deep in despair and poverty, when
word reached him of the gold-strike
in the Klondyke. Here was a chance
to mend his shattered fortunes, and
those of his gang of thugs and card-
sharps, at the expense of the ever-
increasing stream of chechakos surg-
ing northward to the goldfields.

The Gang Gathers
Borrowing passage-money, “Soapy”

STRAITS
CONSTRUCTION

Telephone: TA 5331
Box 499 Kitimat, B.C.

I

TWENTY-EIGHTH EDITION

Page Nine