October 15, 2011

Frank Reid Falls and the Skagway cemetery.




Below is nice video of Reid Falls just behind the cemetery. The camera man then walks into the cemetery stopping at several of the graves including those of Frank Reid and Soapy Smith. It is beautiful scenery.









OCTOBER 15

1892: Soap Gangster, Jeff Dunbar, reportedly tries to extort money from soiled dove, Flossie Leigh at the Tivoli Club in Denver. When Leigh refuses Dunbar buffalos (hits) her head several times with his pistol.



TRIVIA

From the Newsminer.com in Fairbanks, Alaska I found the following.

75 YEARS AGO-

Oct. 12, 1936 — Lee Wakefield, a veteran Alaska packer who was in Seward recently, told of how 40 years ago he and a number of residents of Wrangell ran Soapy Smith out of town and to Skagway. When Soapy Smith and his band of racketeers hit Wrangell, he was invited to move on, and he did so, going to Skagway where residents put an end to his career.

Here's the problem with it. Soapy's travels to Alaska, beginning in 1896, are pretty well accounted for using newspapers, ship passenger records and his personal and business letters and documents. There is no provenance Soapy ever stopped in Wrangell, let alone tried to make it his home. It was just too far from the Klondike gold fields. Sorry Wrangell.





Jeff Smith









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