The backside of Creede, Colorado 1892.

Creede, Colorado 1892
Behind Creede Avenue

(Click image to enlarge)

t's day all day in the day-time,
and there is no night in Creede.

      Construction went on nearly 24-hours-a-day in Creede during the silver rush of 1892. The light-colored rock of the near perfect vertical canyon walls reflected the lights, making it very bright at night, hence the poem, "It's day all day.."

Enlarged Close-up showing the Orleans Club flag
Note the construction builders on the roofs

      The photograph clearly shows a lot of construction going on within the business district. The surviving photographs of the town show that many of the buildings never had a chance to be painted before burning to the ground in June 1892. In this photograph there can be seen an American flag. Although not 100% conclusive, the location is right, plus the fact that in all of the known photographs of Creede, there is only one flag flying high above the buildings, and that flag was attached to the Orleans Club, the combination saloon and gaming house of town boss, bad man "Soapy" Smith.

 

You see, nobody would touch Soapy after he was shot. … They were just scared to touch him. This woman came down … and she offered one hundred dollars a piece if they’d carry him off, and they did. They took him down to the morgue. Cost her four hundred bucks according to the story…. That was the story that went around. I don’t know how much they got.

— Royal Pullen
Alias Soapy Smith, p. 537.

OCTOBER 9

1539: Hernando De Soto claims Florida for Spain.

1621: The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands (now known as New York).

1784: Congress formally creates the U.S. Army to replace the disbanded Continental Army. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress had created the Continental Army for purposes of common defense and this event is considered to be the birth of the United States Army.

1800: John Adams moves to Washington D.C., being the first president to live in the capitol.

1805: A peace treaty between the U.S. and Tripoli is signed in the captain's cabin on board the USS Constitution.

1851: The New York Knickerbockers are the first baseball team to don uniforms.

1856: Cullen Whipple patents the screw machine.

1871: The Obocock Bank in Corydon, Iowa is robbed of gold and bills by 24-year-old Jesse James.

1873: A drunken soldier in a Delano, Kansas dancehall shoots Emma Stanley, a dancer, in the leg. Edward “Red Beard” Beard, the proprietor, rushes a group of soldiers, firing a pistol hitting one soldier in the throat and another in the leg. Two nights’ later some 30 soldiers invade Beard's place shooting and wounding gambler Charles Leshhart and another dance hall maiden. The soldiers then burn the dance hall to the ground.

1874: Bessie and Sallie Earp are arrested for opening a house of ill repute in Wichita, Kansas.

1887: William Moore locates the White Pass Trail near the future town of Skagway Alaska. Soapy Smith makes it his home and final empire of conquest in 1897.

1888: The poem, Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer is published.

1895: Sheriff James Musgrove, of the Cooweescoowee District of the Cherokee Nation is shot and killed by "Frog" Davis, in Catoosa, Oklahoma. Musgrove and Deputy J. Flippin approach Davis’ house to arrest him, but Davis knows they are there, and is hiding in an outhouse. He shoots hitting Musgrove in the abdomen and escapes. Musgrove dies of his wound. The following week Davis is arrested near Tulsa, Oklahoma where he is tried and convicted for the murder.

1895: Two brothers, Bob and Bill Christian, and Jim Casey, escape from the Oklahoma County Jail in Oklahoma City. The brothers were being held for the murder of Pottawatomie County Deputy Sheriff Will Turner. Casey was being held for the murder of Canadian County Deputy sheriff Sam Farris. Chief of Police John Milton Jones and Officer G. Jackson confront the escapees at Grand and Broadway. A gunfight ensues during which Chief Jones and Jim Casey are killed. The Christian brothers escaped.

1898: The San Francisco Call publishes a story in which volunteers of Soapy Smith’s private militia, the Skaguay Military Company, are robbed during a fake doctor exam.