Soapy Smith

When we rode the Silver Thread National Scenic Byway to Creede,  we found a reference to Soapy Smith.  We first became acquainted with Smith when we were visiting Skagway, Alaska, but really didn’t know much about him.  Since then we’ve learned a lot about this notorious con man.

Before he embarked on a life of crime, Jefferson Randolph Smith was a real southern gentleman.  He was born in Georgia to a life of education and wealth.  His grandfather was a plantation owner and popular Georgia senator and legislator.  His father was an attorney.  When the family suffered financial ruin at the close of the Civil War, they moved to Texas.  It was here that Smith started his life of crime.  He formed a group of close-knit disciplined gang members which included his brother and brother-in-law.  For 22 years Smith and his gang moved from town to town and state to state making money on short cons—quick swindles that need little setup but net nice profits.  During the late 1870’s-early 1880’s the gang ended up in Denver Colorado.  Smith set up a short con in which he set up a table on a busy corner.  On the table he built a pyramid of cheap cakes of soap.  With people watching he would wrap a cake of soap with paper money—sometimes a dollar, sometimes a ten or twenty.  He would cover it with blue paper, then return it to the pile.  People would then pay a dollar for a 2 cent cake of soap.    He would wrap the higher $ bills slightly differently from the lower bills, so that his cohorts would end up with them.  From then on he was known as Soapy Smith.  Using various cons Smith ended up owning quite a bit of Denver real estate where he established various businesses in which to run his cons and swindles.  As his wealth and power grew he became a political fixer.  He was confident in his power, enough so that in 1896 he told a newspaper reporter, ‘I consider bunco steering more honorable than the life led by the average politician.” 

Eventually Smith and his brother became too well-known for the most corrupt city officials to be able to protect them.  The Soap Gang removed themselves and followed the Silver Trail to Creede where they quickly set up the same basic system.  Smith provided order of sorts, protecting his friends from the town’s council and expelling violent troublemakers.  Smith again grew rich, but again was known to freely give away money, using it to build churches, help the poor, and bury unfortunate prostitutes.  Creede’s boom quickly waned, but by that time Smith received word that the Denver reforms were coming to an end.  The gang returned to Denver for a few years before their power crumbled again. 

Next Smith followed the Gold Rush Trail and ended up in Skagway, Alaska where he quickly set up the same short cons and exerted himself into local politics.  This time he met quick opposition.  The people of the Alaska frontier proved to be much tougher to fool than the Lower 48 city people.  Soapy lasted barely a year before he enraged the law-abiding citizens of Skagway.  When Smith, carrying a shotgun,  went to challenge a meeting, he was shot and killed, but not before fatally wounding one of the committee.  It was in Skagway that we became acquainted with Soapy Smith via a short stage play.  Smith was presented as a wily but likeable fellow who was just trying to make a living like everyone else.

Maybe tomorrow we get in that ride.

Louise and Duane