Acquisition of old Juneau Wharf photographs: Where Soapy Smith was killed.

Skagway, Alaska by Case and Draper
Approx. 1900
(right to left) Moore Wharf, Sylvester Wharf, Juneau Company Wharf, Seattle-Skaguay Wharf
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

 

 

 few recent proud acquisitions of mine showing the demise of the Juneau Company Wharf where Soapy Smith met his own demise during the Shootout on Juneau Wharf.

      Skagway Bay was not deep enough for ships to anchor very close to land. In the early days of the camp, floating skids rowed out to meet incoming steamers and for a fee passengers could unload their gear onto the skid and then it would be taken to the shore and dumped off. Passengers had to move their stuff before the tide rose or chance losing everything to the rising waters. Wharves, four total, were built rather quickly for ships to anchor at, but in order to do that, they had to build wharves that reached out into the bay nearly one mile in length. Eventually the bay was dredged out so that ships could dock close to land.
      There's not a lot of information on each photograph, but they tell the story of Juneau Wharf's short life. The above photo is the oldest and nicest. A cabinet photo by the photographers Case and Draper, dating about 1900. The photo measures approx 7.5" x 9.5" and with the original matting it comes out to 11" x 14". The matting is not in the best condition but these are too rare to be picky. Although the matting has taken somewhat of a beating over the last 113-years, the photograph itself is in excellent shape. I am proud to add it to my collection.

Close up of Juneau Wharf
The Shootout on Juneau Wharf too place here
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Best known photograph of
the approximate location where
Soapy Smith shot it out with vigilantes
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Juneau Wharf, 1907 postcard
Juneau Wharf (far left) is still in full operation
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Juneau Wharf, 1907
Yellow circle shows where the gunfight took place.
Jeff Smith

(Click image to enlarge)

Steamer docked at Moore's Wharf
Postcard, dated 1924
Juneau Wharf can be seen on the far left
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Close up of Juneau Wharf, 1924
The two warehouse buildings are gone
Wharf is closed and deteriorating.
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Moore Wharf, abt. 1940
The ruins of Juneau Wharf are dead center
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Close up of 1940 photograph
Much of the plank flooring that held the two buildings is gone
The yellow circle contains the location of the Shootout on Juneau Wharf.
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Skagway, Alaska today
None of the four original wharves remain
Dotted blue line shows where Juneau Wharf once stood
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

 










Juneau Wharf
November 29, 2008
December 23, 2008
June 2, 2009
November 1, 2009
February 16, 2011
April 23, 2011
March 1, 2011

Juneau Wharf: pages 9, 12, 530-32, 535, 538, 546-51, 554, 564, 575, 595.

I turned to say thank you, sir, but he was gone…. I am only a woman, but I have got a vote and so has my husband, and anybody who does an act like that for us shows that they have hearts that are in the right place, and I think that they are better than the people who abuse them.

— Alias Soapy Smith, p. 329.

FEBRUARY 23

1792: The Humane Society of Massachusetts is incorporated.

1813: The first U.S. raw cotton-to-cloth mill is founded in Waltham, Massachusetts.

1821: The Philadelphia College of Apothecaries establishes the first pharmacy college.

1822: Boston, Massachusetts is incorporated as a city.

1836: the siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.

1847: Santa Anna is defeated at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico by U.S. troops during the Mexican-American War.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington, D.C. to take his office after an assassination attempt in Baltimore, Maryland.

1861: Texas becomes the 7th state to secede from the Union prior to the Civil War. In 1876 the parents of Soapy Smith make Texas their new home.

1864: Between 20 and 200 Tonto Apache Indians are murdered after being lured to an Arizona peace conference in Bloody Tanks, Arizona Territory by King Woolsey, claiming to be a representative of the Federal government. The Indians are fed pinole loaded with strychnine and then fired upon. A possible motive is that gold had been discovered at nearby Prescott.

1870: The state of Mississippi is readmitted to the Union.

1874: Walter Winfield patents a game called sphairistike, known later as lawn tennis.

1875: J. Palisa discovers “Adria” (asteroid #143).

1879: Outlaw William “Colorado Bill” Elliott, wanted for murder in four states, kills his fifth victim, David Brown. Elliott was apprehended and sentenced to death on May 28, 1879 in Fort Smith by Judge Isaac Parker and hung on August 29, 1879.

1883: Alabama is the first state to enact an antitrust law.

1885: The last Missouri charge against outlaw Frank James is dropped. It involved the 1876 Missouri Pacific train robbery near Otterville, Cooper County, MO in which over $15,000 was stolen. Frank was arrested shortly after his acquittal in the Muscle Shoals paymaster case the previous April. This marked the end of Frank’s legal problems as Minnesota’s effort to charge him in the murder & attempted robbery at Northfield eventually faded away.

1886: Charles M. Hall invents aluminum.

1896: The Tootsie Roll candy is introduced.

1904: The U.S. acquires control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10,000,000.

Photograph: Entrance to Juneau Company Wharf, circa 1930s-40s.

Entrance to Juneau Company Wharf
Location of the shootout on Juneau Wharf 1898
Circa 1930s-1940s
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

     

 

 ntrance to Juneau Company Wharf

 

 

Here is a new addition to my photograph collection. The above is the cropped, close-up showing the entrance to the Juneau Company Wharf where Soapy Smith and Frank Reid shot it out in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, July 8, 1898. Every time I find and publish a new photograph of the location were Soapy was killed, I think of the historians who post new finds of the lot behind the OK Corral in Tombstone, where the Shootout on Fremont Street took place on October 26, 1881.

     The photograph below shows the entire frame.

 

Entire photograph
Circa 1930s-1940s
Jeff Smith collection

  (Click image to enlarge)

Visit the Soapy Smith Soap Box blog

 

Juneau Wharf
Nov 29, 2008
Dec 23, 2008
Jun 02, 2009
Nov 01, 2009
Feb 16, 2011
Apr 23, 2011
Mar 01, 2011
Apr 19, 2012
May 02, 2012
Feb 23, 2014
Oct 14, 2014
Nov 30, 2016
May 17, 2017
Aug 16, 2017
Nov 12, 2021

Juneau Wharf: pages 9, 12, 530-32, 535, 538, 546-51, 554, 564, 575, 595.

"[Frank H. Reid] … never was anything but a crooked bartender."

—Cecelia Selmer Price
1958 letter to Justin M. Smith (Soapy’s grandson)

Skaguay, Alaska Wharves, 1898: A new acqusition for my collection.

ALASKA SCENERY
White Pass and Yukon Railway
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

KAGUAY WHARVES
Circa 1898

      I am very proud to share my latest acquisition to my collection. Mounted on the original board and entitled Alaska Scenery. White Pass and Yukon Railway. It is dated 1898 by the photographer Harrie C. Barley. Note that the original spelling of Skaguay, whereas it was changed to "Skagway." 

      I purchased it as it is a perfect view of the Juneau Company Wharf (second wharf from the left) and the location where the shootout on Juneau Wharf took place. I zoomed in as close as I could get to the entrance of the wharf at State Street, the fight having took place about 60 feet into the entrance.

Juneau Company Wharf
(zoomed in)
Note the railroad tracks along side the wharf
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Note the train tracks on the beach, to the right of Juneau Wharf. Every day, the tide completely covered the tracks and sometimes made it's way as far as Third Street.

Entrance to Juneau Wharf
(zoomed in)
Soapy Smith was killed 60 feet from the entrance
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

The End of Soapy Smith
By Andy Thomas

Photographer:

Photographer H. C. Barley (also known as Harrie C. and Harry C.) was hired as the company photographer for the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad in the spring of 1898. He worked for two years documenting the construction and early operation of the 110-mile narrow gauge railway which ran from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Barley was known for his daring, often risking his life to get the perfect photograph of the construction of the railway. Some construction crews refused to work when Barley was nearby due to the extreme risks he took. He said, "Put me close enough to the blast and I'll stuff the echo." In one of the first accidents at the Rocky Point blasting site, Barley was struck by a rock from the detonation and was unable to walk for a week. Originally from Denver, Colorado, Barley made Skagway his home after relocating north. His first photography studio in Skagway was on Fourth Avenue between Broadway and Spring Street. He later relocated it to the corner of Broadway and Fourth Avenue. He served for a brief period on the Skagway City Council and was a member of the Skagway Elks Lodge. Barley also photographed in the Atlin, British Columbia, area during the gold rush in 1899-1900. Barley died of tuberculosis at his home in San Francisco on November 22, 1909, shortly after the Klondike gold rush. Source Archives West.

Juneau Company Wharf (note: the posts are not in any order of importance. There are several pages of posts.)

Juneau Company Wharf: pages 9, 12, 530-32, 535, 538, 546-51, 554, 564, 575, 595.

"He had an unconquerable aversion to making money by honest means and loved the art of fleecing his prey and then arranging it so his victims earnestly thanked him for his services."

—Alias Soapy Smith, Introduction.

NOVEMBER 30

1782: The U.S. and Britain sign preliminary peace articles in Paris, France, ending the American Revolution.

1803: Spain completes the process of ceding Louisiana to France.

1804: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase goes on trial accused of political bias. He is later acquitted by the U.S. Senate.

1835: America’s most famous literary icon, Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born in Florida, Missouri. Best known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, both written under the moniker “Mark Twain.”

1875: A. J. Ehrichson patents the oat-crushing machine.

1878: The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe lay railroad tracks crossing Colorado's southern border into New Mexico Territory, the first tracks into New Mexico.

1879: Outlaw Billy the Kid meets with rancher John Chisum, at Bob Hargrove's saloon in New Mexico Territory, to talk about recent rustlings.

1881: Judge Wells Spicer of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, officially states that the Earp’s and Doc Holiday were justified in their actions, which led to, and include the gunfight behind the OK Corral. In another matter bad man “cow-boy” Johnny Ringo is arrested for having robbed a poker game in August 1881.

1884: At nineteen-years-old, Elfego Baca, arrests a cowboy in New Mexico Territory for disturbing the peace. When friends of the cowboy attempt to “teach Baca a lesson,” he shoots and kills the foreman.

1887: Outlaws Robert Leroy “Butch Cassidy” Parker and the McCarty brothers, stop, but fail their attempt to rob the Denver and Rio Grande express near Grand Junction, Colorado. The stubborn express guard refuses to open the safe in the mail car and rather than kill him, the gang allows the train to continue on their way, leaving the bandits empty-handed.

1892: Bank robber Oliver “Ol” Yantis, a member of the infamous Doolin Dalton Gang, succumbs to his wounds after a gunfight with Deputy US Marshal Tom Hueston near Orlando, Oklahoma, the previous day. the lawmen trailed Yantis to his sister’s home outside of Orlando. The two lawmen demanded his surrender. Yantis walked out as if giving up but drew a revolver and fired. The lawmen returned fire, hitting Yantis in the leg and stomach. The lawmen took the wounded Yantis to a hotel in Orlando, where he died on this day. Yantis is the first of the Doolin Dalton gang members to fall. Hueston would later be killed during another shootout with the Doolin Dalton gang members in Ingalls, Oklahoma, during the Battle of Ingalls. It is believed that Soapy Smith’s wife Mary was a cousin of the outlaw Dalton’s.

1897: Thomas Edison's motion picture projector has its first commercial exhibition.

1897: The Rocky Mountain News reports that bad man Soapy Smith is “in New York organizing a Klondyke [sic] expedition to start from the East in February (1898).”

Close-up of spot where shootout on Juneau Wharf took place.

Entrance to Juneau Company Wharf
Close-up
Taken from the air
1936

(Click image to enlarge)

 

 

 

lose-up of the entrance of Juneau Company Wharf, 1936

Where Soapy Smith met his demise, July 8, 1898.

Full Photograph
1936

(Click image to enlarge)

Taken from an airplane in 1936 the photograph shows the ruins of the Juneau Company Wharf where Soapy Smith was killed on July 8, 1898. The entrance to the wharf is at State Street and 1st Avenue, where a memorial marker now resides. It appears that a blockade of sorts has been erected to keep people off of the derelict wharf. According to stories told by locals, the blood stains from the shootout remained on the wharf and were a popular point to show visiting friends and family. I circled in red the general vicinity where the shootout between Soapy, Frank Reid and Jesse Murphy took place. 

Visit the Soapy Smith Soap Box blog

 

Juneau Wharf
Nov 29, 2008
Dec 23, 2008
Jun 02, 2009
Nov 01, 2009
Feb 16, 2011
Apr 23, 2011
Mar 01, 2011
Apr 19, 2012
May 02, 2012
Feb 23, 2014
Oct 14, 2014
Nov 30, 2016
May 17, 2017
Aug 16, 2017

Juneau Wharf: pages 9, 12, 530-32, 535, 538, 546-51, 554, 564, 575, 595.

"There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away."

—Author Unknown

"New" photograph of Juneau Company Wharf, Skagway, Alaska, where Soapy Smith died.

JUNEAU COMPANY WHARF
"Skagway from Outside Wharf - (Third Wharf)"
Circa 1899
Courtesy of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

(Click image to enlarge)

erhaps one of the closest photographs showing the location of the gunfight on Juneau Wharf.

     According to the accounts the shootout between Soapy Smith, Frank Reid and Jesse Murphy took place about 60 feet inside the entrance of the wharf. There are stories of early residents of Skagway showing visiting friends and tourists the blood stains on the wooden planks where Soapy and Reid fell.

Are those blood stains?
Close-up of approximate location of the gunfight.
Circa 1899
Courtesy of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

(Click image to enlarge)

     

     Historian and publisher, Art Petersen came across this photograph while researching the photographic files at the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. We thank him very much for sharing this with us.

      In comparing photographs there is no doubt that the photo is of Juneau Wharf.

Comparison of matching structures.

(Click image to enlarge)

Juneau Company Wharf
The above link is a general search of the blog. Be sure to scroll to the bottom. There are more articles if you click "more posts" at the bottom of the page.

"A clever rascal in one of Shakespeare’s plays claims that “Some men are born great…, Some achieve greatness…, And some have greatness thrust upon them.” And some, like the imposing, contradictory, aggressive, charming, and unforgettable Soapy Smith–his watermarks all through the pages of the last chapters of the American West–have all three."

— Art Petersen, Alias Soapy Smith

AUGUST 16

1777: The Battle of Bennington takes place. New England's minutemen route the British regulars.

1812: Detroit falls to Indian and British troops during the War of 1812.

1829: 18-year-old "Siamese twins," Chang and Eng Bunker, arrive in Boston, Massachusetts for exhibition. They have been joined at the waist since birth.

1858: A telegraph message from Britain's Queen Victoria to U.S. President Buchanan is transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable.

1861: U.S. President Lincoln prohibits Union states from trading with the states of the Confederacy.

1878: Lawman John Beckwith is involved in a shooting in the home of his father, Henry, who had killed his son-in-law, William Johnson, during an argument in the ranch house located in New Mexico Territory. John had tried to intervene and was almost shot by his own father. Earlier in the year John was among those who killed rancher John Tunstall, setting off the infamous Lincoln County war.

1896: Gold is discovered in the Klondike, Canada starting the Klondike gold rush. It is what draws bad man Soapy Smith to Alaska, and to his death. George Washington Carmack, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, discover the gold in Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River, Yukon Territory. Carmack staked his claim, marking the beginning of the world's largest gold rush as thousands of miners poured into the territory. Word of the discovery does not reach the outside world until July of the following year, when the steamer Portland docked in Seattle with two tons of gold in her cargo hold. At the time North America was experiencing a severe economic depression known as the Panic of 1893. The rush literally ended the depression overnight. Of the tens of thousands who ventured north, Soapy Smith joined the stampeders, not to mine for gold, but to mine the stampeders of their gold.

1899: Outlaw “Black Jack” Ketchum stopped a Colorado and Southern train near Folsom, Arizona Territory. After robbing the train, conductor Frank Harrington fired at him with a shotgun but apparently missed. The two men continued exchanging shots and both men were wounded, Ketchum receiving buckshot in the chest, but he managed to escape. Ketchum was found the next day alive and propped against a tree. He was taken to Santa Fe where he was tried and hung on April 25, 1901.

1923: 20 members of the Denver Blonger gang are arrested in a raid that ends Blonger rule in the city. The Blonger’s were Soapy Smith’s successors to the underworld throne in Denver.

1924: Former Doolin-Dalton outlaw gang member Roy Daugherty, alias “Arkansas Tom,” is killed in a shootout with lawmen in Missouri.

Location of the shootout on Juneau Wharf where Soapy Smith was killed.

(#1) Postcard view from Juneau Wharf
Circa 1908-1915
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

ocation of the shootout on Juneau Wharf

     This recent acquisition shows one of the closest photographs I have yet to see of the location where my great-grandfather, "Soapy" Smith, met his demise at the hands of vigilantes Frank Reid and Jesse Murphy on July 8, 1898. It is a postcard dated by the seller between 1907-1915.

     The earliest this photo can be is May 1908 as that is the date that the Dewey Hotel moved to Broadway and 2nd Avenue (see photo #2).

 

(#2) Same postcard cleaned up and identified
Circa 1908-1915
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

     The railroad tracks in the picture above (#2) confirm that this photograph was taken from where the Juneau Company Wharf ruins then stood. The wharf posts are still in place and wharf planks litter the ground. The spot where the photographer is standing, as well as the direction he/she is shooting, is noted on photo (#3).

(#3) Skaguay street plan
March 8, 1898
Note that this plan was created with the aid of Frank Reid,
the vigilante who shot and wounded Soapy Smith.

(Click image to enlarge)

November 3, 2016
October 14, 2014
February 23, 2014
May 2, 2012
April 19, 2012
June 2, 2009
November 29, 2008

"I find people putting their money into savings banks. Now, this is dead wrong. The faro bank is the only safe bank. It is run by honorable, high-minded men, who would scorn to do evil."

— Jefferson R. Smith
Rocky Mountain News, 9/25/1894
Alias Soapy Smith, p. 352.

MAY 17

1792: The New York Stock Exchange is founded by 24 brokers.

1875: The first Kentucky Derby is run at Louisville, Kentucky.

1877: The first telephone switchboard burglar alarm is installed.

1881: Frederick Douglass is appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.

1849: Fire destroys much of St. Louis, Missouri. At around 9 a.m., a paddleboat on the Mississippi River catches fire. As it drifts, bumping into other steamboats along the way, it destroys 22 more steamers. The fire leaps to shore and spreads through the town. Fire Captain Thomas Targee dies trying to use gunpowder to create a firebreak; He is the first known firefighter killed in the line of duty. The city burns for nearly 12-hours. Remarkably, only two other lives are lost. St. Louis is home to the Noonan family, whose daughter, Mary Eva, marries bad man “Soapy” Smith.

1853: Fort Riley is established in Kansas Territory.

1868: Camp Cooke, on the Judith River, Montana Territory, is attacked by an estimated 2,500 Sioux Indians.

1870: The Union Pacific water tower in Kit Carson, Colorado Territory is torn down by Indians.

1871: Town lots go on sale in Tucson, Arizona Territory.

1872: Tracks for the Denver and Rio Grande railroad are still 20 miles from Pueblo, Colorado Territory when the workers run out of iron.

1876: George Armstrong Custer begins his campaign against the Indians. He will die this year during the Battle of Little Bighorn.

1883: Buffalo Bill's first touring outdoor show, The Wild West: Honorable W. F. Carver's Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition, debuts in Omaha, Nebraska.

1885: Geronimo and Nana lead 134 Apache Indians off the San Carlos reservation, Arizona Territory, and begin a series of raids, killing 73 civilians and soldiers on their way to Mexico.

1891: Cash and other relics left behind by the Donner Party are found in Truckee, California.