The OK Corral of AK

Subtitle 1: Infamous Alaskans
Subtitle 2: You Will Hear this Name in Alaska

Although many "proper" businesses came to Skagway with the Gold Rush (you know - saloons, ladies of the evening), the town soon also attracted another element.

Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith was a known con man and organized crime leader who gained his nickname by "selling" soap.

Piling ordinary soap cakes onto a display on a street corner, he began expounding on their wonders. As he spoke to the growing crowd of curious onlookers, he would pull out his wallet and begin wrapping paper money, ranging from one dollar up to one hundred dollars, around a select few of the bars. He then finished each bar by wrapping plain paper around it to hide the money.

He mixed the money-wrapped packages in with wrapped bars containing no money. He then sold the soap to the crowd for one dollar a cake. A shill planted in the crowd would buy a bar, tear it open, and loudly proclaim that he had won some money, waving it around for all to see. This performance had the desired effect of enticing the sale of the packages. More often than not, victims bought several bars before the sale was completed. Midway through the sale, Smith would announce that the hundred-dollar bill yet remained in the pile, unpurchased. He then would auction off the remaining soap bars to the highest bidders.

Smith quickly became known as "Soapy Smith" all across the western United States. He used this swindle for twenty years with great success. The soap sell, along with other scams, helped finance Soapy's criminal operations by paying graft to police, judges, and politicians. He was able to build three major criminal empires: the first in Denver, Colorado (1886–1895); the second in Creede, Colorado (1892); and the third in Skagway, Alaska (1897–1898).

When the Klondike Gold Rush began, Soapy moved his operations to Skagway. He opened a fake telegraph office in which the wires went only as far as the wall. Not only did the telegraph office obtain fees for "sending" messages, but cash-laden victims soon found themselves losing even more money in poker games with new found "friends."

Soapy opened a saloon named Jeff Smith's Parlor (in March 1898), as an office from which to run his operations, which included various forms of gambling, swindling, and graft.





After one miner lost a sack of gold in a rigged card game, locals had had enough and organized a vigilante. The vigilantes held a meeting on the wharf. Soapy began an argument with Frank Reid, one of four guards blocking his way to the wharf. A gunfight began unexpectedly, and Soapy died on the spot.

Although Frank Reid himself died a few days later, he was hailed as a hero for ridding the town of Soapy Smith. Both Smith and Reid are buried in Gold Rush Cemetery just outside town. The cemetery and Soapy's saloon are featured on most tours of Skagway.