I recently spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in the Gold Rush cemetery in Skagway, wandering behind tour guides who reenacted Skagway’s most famous story: the shoot-out that ended the reign of terror — and the life — of the notorious con man Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith. Thousands of gold seekers who poured through town on their way to the Klondike fell victim to the many scams and schemes that Soapy had perfected during his long criminal career in the American West. Upon his death, the Skagway townspeople erected a monument to the man credited with shooting him, Frank Reid, who perished from injuries sustained in the same gunfight. “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway,” is etched in the stone.
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