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Author: Julie Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Author: Julie Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Author: Catherine Holder Spude
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806188200
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
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.
Author: Los Angeles County Public Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1364
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Book Description
Author: Pierre Berton
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385673647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
With the building of the railroad and the settlement of the plains, the North West was opening up. The Klondike stampede was a wild interlude in the epic story of western development, and here are its dramatic tales of hardship, heroism, and villainy. We meet Soapy Smith, dictator of Skagway; Swiftwater Bill Gates, who bathed in champagne; Silent Sam Bonnifield, who lost and won back a hotel in a poker game; and Roddy Connors, who danced away a fortune at a dollar a dance. We meet dance-hall queens, paupers turned millionaires, missionaries and entrepreneurs, and legendary Mounties such as Sam Steele, the Lion of the Yukon. Pierre Berton's riveting account reveals to us the spectacle of the Chilkoot Pass, and the terrors of lesser-known trails through the swamps of British Columbia, across the glaciers of souther Alaska, and up the icy streams of the Mackenzie Mountains. It contrasts the lawless frontier life on the American side of the border to the relative safety of Dawson City. Winner of the Governor General's award for non-fiction, Klondike is authentic history and grand entertainment, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Canadian frontier.
Author: Steve Levi
Publisher: Publication Consultants
ISBN: 1637470088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
It is the land of the Alaska Gold Rush, where nuggets were said to be the size of goose eggs, where men froze to death in search of the elusive yellow metal, and dancehall girls lured overnight millionaire sourdoughs into marriage. Honky-tonk pianos punctuated the howl of the north wind in towns that were half-tent and half-ramshackle collections of driftwood, whalebone, and packing cases. It was a time of whiskey and gold and long, lonely trails behind a dogsled. It was, in a word, ALASKA. In cities, rugged men and women walked on planks set across streets so deep with spring mud horses could be swallowed. On the tundra, life was a living hell with mosquitoes, gnats, white socks, and biting flies descending in clouds on warm-blooded creatures. On the flip side of the season, temperature could drop to 50 or 60 degrees below zero, cold enough to freeze a can of oil so solid it could be cut in half with a saw. With wind blasting at 100 miles an hour, the chill factor could go down to 100 degrees below zero, cold enough to freeze a person to death in a matter of minutes if he could not find proper shelter. In whiteout conditions, visibility could diminish to a foot in a matter of minutes. It was, in a word, ALASKA.
Author: Preston Jones
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
ISBN: 1889963895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
In 1898, Nome, Alaska, burst into the American consciousness when one of the largest gold strikes in the world occurred on its shores. Over the next ten years, Nome’s population exploded as both men and women came north to seek their fortunes. Closer to Siberia than to New York, Nome’s citizens created their own version of small-town America on the northern frontier. Less than 150 miles from the Arctic Circle, they weathered the Great War and the diphtheria epidemic of 1925 as well as floods, fires, and the Great Depression. They enlivened the Alaska winters with pastimes such as high-school basketball and social clubs. Empire’s Edge is the story of how ordinary Americans made a life on the edge of a continent—a life both ordinary and extraordinary.
Author: Marius Barbeau
Publisher: Shorey's Bookstore
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
Author: Ramon Frederick Adams
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 9780486400358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 848
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Book Description
Authoritative guide to everything in print about lawmen and the lawless—from Billy the Kid to the painted ladies of frontier cow towns. Nearly 2,500 entries, taken from newspapers, court records, and more.
Author: Julian Haynes Steward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
Author: Arctic Institute of North America
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arctic regions
Languages : en
Pages : 1526
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Book Description
