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| Title | Group of men outside City Hall, vigilantes preparing to go after the Soapy Smith Gang, Skagway, 1898 |
| Photographer | Unknown |
| Date | 1898 |
| Notes | Caption on image: Rounding up the Soapy Smith Gang
Filed in Alaska--Cities--Skagway |
| Contextual Notes | The lure of gold brought more than honest miners and foolish adventurers to the North. It also brought con men, thieves and opportunists who got rich by preying on gullible miners. Notorious among them was Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, whose gang of over 100 ruffians ruled Skagway in 1897 and 1898. He ran crooked gambling halls, freight companies that hauled nothing, telegraph offices that had no telegraph link, even an "army enlistment" tent where the victim's clothes and possessions were stolen while a "doctor" gave him a physical. His men met newcomers at the docks posing as clergymen, newspaper reporters, knowledgeable old-timers and freight company representatives. After sizing up a fellow with a fat wallet, they would direct him to one of Soapy's bogus businesses or mark him for a later robbery. Soapy met his end when he and his thugs fleeced a miner of $2,800 in gold. The miner, instead of slinking away beaten, fired up the citizens of Skagway who formed a vigilante committee headed by Frank Reid, a civil engineer. Reid stood up to Soapy and shot him in the heart, but was fatally wounded in the shootout. [Source: http://www.library.state.ak.us/goldrush/stories/soapy.htm] |
| Subjects (LCTGM) | Vigilance committees--Alaska--Skagway; City & town halls--Alaska--Skagway; Wooden buildings--Alaska--Skagway; Group portraits |
| Subjects (LCSH) | Vigilantes--Alaska--Skagway; City halls--Alaska--Skagway; Skagway (Alaska)--Buildings, structures, etc. |
| Location Depicted | United States--Alaska--Skagway |
| Digital Collection | Alaska, Western Canada and United States Collection
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| Order Number | AWC0348
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| Ordering Information | To order a reproduction, inquire about permissions, or for information about prices see: http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcollections/services/reproduction-info |
| Negative Number | UW3783 |
| Repository | University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division |
| Repository Collection | Alaska Photograph Collection |
| Object Type | Photograph |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from a photographic print using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL at 100 dpi in JPEG format at compression rate 3 and resized to 768x600 ppi. 2004. |
| Restrictions | For information on permissions for use and reproductions please visit UW Libraries Special Collections Reproduction & Use page
http://content.lib.washington.edu/sc-use.html |
