I have always enjoyed folklore and during our tour of Skagway, Alaska, one of my favorite stops was the local cemetery that included the story of “Soapy” Smith.

Jefferson R. “Soapy” Smith was a swindler who loved talking people out of their money. In 1879, he lived in Denver and worked out of his suitcase on street corners. He became known as “Soapy” because the suitcase was filled with bars of soap wrapped inside plain paper. People were encouraged to buy a bar for five dollars. Why? Inside some bars a ten, twenty- or fifty-dollar bill might be wrapped around the bar and if you were lucky, you might get one of those bars. Of course, Soapy had a stooge nearby that would buy a bar, open it and find the fifty-dollar bill. This encouraged others to participate. Even after people became wise to his tactic, they still flocked around him for the performance.

Soapy became involved in politics and assisted in rigging votes in local elections until 1892, when he was run out of the town. He continued his con games and settled in Skagway in 1898, during the Klondike Gold Rush. He never panned for gold. Instead, he built a saloon for the miners to spend their money. He also recruited fellow con men to help him establish schemes to fleece people out of their money – one being a phony telegraph line where people thought they were paying to send messages to loved ones. The lines went no further than the inside walls.

When Soapy learned that the townspeople were holding a meeting to vote to run him out of town, he liquored himself up, grabbed his shotgun and decided to crash the meeting. Frank Reed had been assigned to stop him and killed Soapy in the “Shootout of Juneau Wharf.”

Soapy was buried beneath a plain tombstone in a secluded fenced off corner of the local cemetery.

Frank Reed died twelve days later but in gratitude to his service, he was given a more magnificent tombstone with “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway” engraved on it.

Throughout the narration of the story, I envisioned something like the 1881 Gunfight at OK Corral.

I mentioned in a previous blog that three ladies dressed in costumes of the mining era, conducted the tours and provided the backstories. I’m sure they all studied drama as they gave spectacular performances.