As the Klondike gold rush peaked in spring 1898, adventurers and gamblers rubbed shoulders with town-builders and gold-panners in Skagway, Alaska. The flow of riches lured confidence men, too—among them Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith (1860–98), who with an entourage of “bunco-men” conned and robbed the stampeders. Soapy, though, a common enough criminal, would go down in legend as the Robin Hood of Alaska, the “uncrowned king of Skagway,” remembered for his charm and generosity, even for calming a lynch mob. When the Fourth of July was celebrated in ’98, he supposedly led the parade. Then, a few days later, he was dead, killed in a shootout over a card game. With Smith’s death, Skagway rid itself of crime forever. Or at least, so the story goes. Journalists immediately cast him as a martyr whose death redeemed a violent town. In fact, he was just a petty criminal and card shark, as Catherine Holder Spude proves definitively in “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend, a tour de force of historical debunking that documents Smith’s elevation to western hero. In sorting out the facts about this man and his death from fiction, Spude concludes that the actual Soapy was not the legendary “boss of Skagway,” nor was he killed by Frank Reid, as early historians supposed. She shows that even eyewitnesses who knew the truth later changed their stories to fit the myth. But why? Tracking down some hundred retellings of the Soapy Smith story, Spude traces the efforts of Skagway’s boosters to reinforce a morality tale at the expense of a complex story of town-building and government formation. The idea that Smith’s death had made a lawless town safe served Skagway’s economic interests. Spude’s engaging deconstruction of Soapy’s story models deep research and skepticism crucial to understanding the history of the American frontier.

Winner of the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction The remarkable tale of two young men during the Klondike Gold Rush, told through first-hand diaries, letters, and more—“excellent reading” for middle grade fans of The Call of the Wild and adventure stories (School Library Journal) As thousands head north in search of gold, Marshall Bond and Stanley Pearce join them, booking passage on a steamship bound for the Klondike goldfields. The journey is life threatening, but the two friends make it to Dawson City, in Canada, build a cabin, and meet Jack London—all the while searching for the ultimate reward: gold! A riveting, true, action-packed adventure, with their telegrams, diaries, and letters, as well as newspaper articles and photographs. An author’s note, timeline, bibliography, and further resources encourage readers to dig deeper into the Gold Rush era.

Exploring the significance of places that built our cultural past, this guide is a lens into historical sites spanning the entire history of the United States, from Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero. Historic Sites and Landmarks That Shaped America: From Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero encompasses more than 200 sites from the earliest settlements to the present, covering a wide variety of locations. It includes concise yet detailed entries on each landmark that explain its importance to the nation. With entries arranged alphabetically according to the name of the site and the state in which it resides, this work covers both obscure and famous landmarks to demonstrate how a nation can grow and change with the creation or discovery of important places. The volume explores the ways different cultures viewed, revered, or even vilified these sites. It also examines why people remember such places more than others. Accessible to both novice and expert readers, this well-researched guide will appeal to anyone from high school students to general adult readers.

This sesquicentennial project of Presbyterian College tells the stories of thirteen individuals, chosen from among its graduates, faculty and benefactors, whose still voices represent in unique ways the history and influence of the college over the past 150 years. Each chapter presents a biography, a sermon, address, letter or report, followed by a commentary showing how this still voice spoke to the issues of the time and why it still should be heard. The themes remind us of the college's continuing mission to provide the Church with strong and visionary leaders. The book concludes with useful lists of Presbyterian College's students, scholars, supporters and societies down through the years.

How the interests of Seattle and Japanese Americans were linked in the processes of urban boosterism before World War II.

The history of the Klondike, with its harrowing narratives of climbing the Chilkoot and White passes, braving the rapids of the Yukon River and striking it rich only to go broke again, has become legend. Yet there are still more untold stories that linger in the boarded-up ghost towns, forgotten wilderness cabins and along overgrown trails. Yukon historian Michael Gates has made a career of poking around both the archives and the outdoors of the North. Used as a trading route by the Chilkat Tlingit for centuries, the Dalton Trail was taken over by Jack Dalton, a hard driving, murdering, entrepreneurial adventurer, who built bridges and way stations and set up a toll booth. For a fee he would pack passengers and freight to and from Dawson, gaining a reputation for a difficult but safe passage. This is the trail where starry-eyed financiers first dreamed of building a railroad to Dawson City, where thousands of head of cattle were regularly driven north--with only some reaching their destination--and where reindeer were unsuccessfully introduced to the Yukon as pack animals. Despite its short existence--from 1897 to 1903, when it was superceded by the relative ease of the Chilkoot and White trails--the Dalton Trail was also a flashpoint for conflict with the local Natives, border disputes between Canada and the US, and the jumping-off point for yet another gold strike at Porcupine Creek. While the Klondike stories are (nearly) all true, just remember--it happened first on the Dalton.