Skagway\u2019s legendary outlaw, Jefferson Randolph Smith, gained his fame for cons like telling newly arrived Gold Rush stampeders that a family member had just telegraphed in distress and required quite a bit of money. The newcomers, unaware that Skagway\u2019s \u201ctelegraph cable\u201d ended just offshore, would rush to pay Smith.<\/p>\n
His nickname came from another con, a kind of soap lottery, in which he sold bars of soap, one of which had a $100 bill beneath its wrapping. That $100 was inevitably won by an employee pretending not to know him.<\/p>\n
During the Klondike Gold Rush, he and his band of conmen and thieves ruled Skagway. All that came to a quick end on July 8, 1898. After his men robbed a returning stampeder, John D. Stewart, of about $2,700 in gold, the town met to deal with the Smith situation. Smith tried to crash the meeting and ended up in a gunfight with Frank Reid. He died on the wharf. (In true Skagwayan fashion, the site is marked with a plaque.) Reid succumbed to his wounds days later.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the stuff of legend \u2014 and as I learned at the opening of the Jeff. Smith Parlor Museum, two men named Martin Itjen and George Rapuzzi helped turn that legend into a money-maker for the town.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Smith\u2019s parlor, Skagway\u2019s story <\/strong><\/p>\n The National Park Service, which was donated the museum and all its contents by the Rasmuson Foundation in 2008, recently completed an eight-year preservation and reconstruction effort. It reopened the museum April 30.<\/p>\n It might interest you to know, that while it is the same building Smith ran his cons from during the Gold Rush, the museum is neither in its original location nor does it contain any of the original Smith artifacts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe obvious expectation for people is that we were going to recreate Jeff Smith\u2019s parlor back from 1898,\u201d explained Ben Hayes, chief of education and interpretation at Klondike Gold Rush National Park. \u201cBut that building was lost in 1900 when the fire department took it apart. What we have is essentially Rapuzzi\u2019s interpretation of Itjen\u2019s museum to Soapy Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n The history is a little convoluted. Built originally to house a bank on 6th Avenue, the building was acquired by Smith after the bank outgrew the tiny premises. He converted it into a bar and gambling parlor. After Smith\u2019s death, several businesses tried and failed in the space.<\/p>\n So in 1900, the fire department took over the building, converted it to a garage and stored their hose cart inside. They even moved it across the street in 1916.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Martin Itjen found it. Itjen came to Skagway as a stampeder. He knew the building\u2019s nefarious past, and decided to become something that would figure hugely in Skagway\u2019s future: a tourism promoter.<\/p>\n Itjen incorporated the parlor into his streetcar tours of the city, advertised with this snappy jingle: \u201cMartin with his streetcar for 50 cents will tell you when and show you where the high spots were for he was there. It starts at nine and takes till noon to show you Skagway in the Klondike boom. If you miss this, you\u2019ll have missed it all and not seen Alaska at all for Martin\u2019s records will tell you all.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of original material didn\u2019t slow him down. Hayes calls him as \u201ca weird inventor type, very imaginative.\u201d He filled his parlor with artifacts, some strange, some wonderful and some not connected to the Soapy Smith story. There\u2019s a \u201cweird diorama of some terrible taxidermy,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cAll these weird animals. Two moose locked in combat with their horns, and newspaper clippings from the Gold Rush era are just used as wallpaper. But his most interesting creations are three animatronic mannequins.\u201d<\/p>\n Itjen created those moving mannequins himself. The first represents Soapy Smith. He greeted visitors from the bar with a raised glass before turning to point his gun at the second mannequins, Dangerous Dan McGrew, (inspired by a Robert Service poem) a shifty character in the corner. And as a final touch, any tourist who wished to visit the restroom was greeted by the outraged screams of the third mannequin, Lady Lou, as she sat upon the toilet.<\/p>\n \u201cSo this is truly one of the most unique museum experiences in Alaska,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIt is one of the first museums in the state in 1935 and it certainly is noteworthy in Alaskan tourism just in its own right, not even if it had the association with Soapy Smith as the original parlor…. It really reflects a period where Skagway was transitioning from gold rush town to a town that was now marketing its past as its future.\u201d<\/p>\n When Itjen died in 1942, the museum was taken over by George Rapuzzi, a first generation Skagwayan born in the Gold Rush. As Hayes puts it: \u201che was a hoarder, for lack of better word. He just collected everything.\u201d Under Rapuzzi\u2019s leadership, the miniature museum added to its collection \u201ca lot more even weirder things.\u201d<\/p>\n Rapuzzi also moved the museum to its current site on 2nd Ave off Broadway, to get it closer to the cruise ships.<\/p>\n But after Rapuzzi died in 1986, the museum fell into disrepair. \u201cFor really 20 years, no one was taking care of this place,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cThe building began to rot into the ground, and by the time 2007 rolls around the building kind of looks like a sinking ship slanted over. There\u2019s all this water coming in through the ceiling. And all this fascinating stuff is still inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is where the Rasmuson Foundation comes in. They acquired the museum as one of five buildings and all their contents from the Rapuzzi family and gifted it to the National Park Service. But there was a lot of work to do before it could open to the public.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eight year\u2019s effort<\/strong><\/p>\n When Hayes first worked at Klondike National Park in 2009, \u201cthey were doing some of the initial emergency stabilization, putting tarps over the roof and trying to shore up the foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n The floors and foundation were rotted and the National Park Service had to lift the entire building to repair and replace them with today\u2019s concrete foundation. The roof also needed extensive repairs, and the artifacts inside were sent south for preservation and restoration after the years of environmental and water damage. \u201cThat was a big task and we\u2019re not a particularly large park,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n There were archeological and historical surveys that needed to be done. A complete new climate control system was also added, as was a new security system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt actually did require eight years of painstaking work to get it to where it is today,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a sentiment shared by Rasmuson Foundation President and CEO Diane Kaplan, who attended the grand reopening. \u201cI remember coming to see the collection probably in 2006 or so. It didn\u2019t look nearly as nice as what is behind me today. I was telling Mike (Tranel, Superintendent of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park) it looks much nicer without all the mouse poop in it. It\u2019s really a miracle what\u2019s been accomplished here.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you don\u2019t see is the one million objects that came with it and the daunting task that the park service had and the city to figure out how to make something of this collection. If you haven\u2019t been inside yet, I think you\u2019ll agree that they\u2019ve done just a beautiful job.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayes returned to Skagway in 2015 and witnessed the end of the museum\u2019s transformation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been really awesome to see how it\u2019s come full circle. I saw how it looked \u2014 very sad \u2014 and now it is a beautiful restored building and you can\u2019t make this stuff up inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the National Park employees did have to guess a little.<\/p>\n \u201cTo put it back together was difficult for us because some of the things were not in there \u2014 they were in other buildings \u2014 so our curators had to look at old pictures (to see how the museum had been set up). There are even pictures taken where there\u2019s a mirror in the room and we were looking at the mirror in the picture to determine how the other wall was,\u201d said Hayes.<\/p>\n Another difficulty lay in determining how to manage the museum once it opened. Skagway and the Klondike National Park can get more than 10,000 visitors a day during the summer, but only 22 people at a time can fit inside the museum.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much to see there is you could spend hours looking at all the things, reading all these newspapers, and not even see it all. So that was also a challenge: we let 22 people inside but we can\u2019t let them hang out there all day,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n The park decided to try ticketed guided tours that \u201clet you experience it with at least half an hour inside.\u201d The tours, which can be booked ahead of time (at http:\/\/1.usa.gov\/1WDiDaD) are $5. Weekends, with the lower cruise ship volume, will be free and more of an informal open house.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Opening with a bang<\/strong><\/p>\n There was almost too much to do in Skagway on April 30. The community started at 9 a.m. with the clean sweep, then people bopped over to the Rec Center sale before hitting the Kone Kompany opening and ending their evening with the May Day Dance. But the tiny Jeff. Smith Parlor Museum let itself be felt.<\/p>\n The events started at 1 p.m. with special tours. 2016 is the National Park Service\u2019s centennial, and its \u2018Every Kid in a Park\u2019 campaign, which offers free park passes to 4th graders and their families, started just last year. But Skagway went one step further than just having their 4th graders visit. Each kid picked an object within the museum and gave its history to the first visitors.<\/p>\n Some were objects that could have been easily overlooked \u2014 like a coffee grinder that looked more like a piece of industrial machinery or an antique gum ball machine that dispensed gum in two flavors, but only stick form. \u201cRound gumballs weren\u2019t there yet,\u201d our youthful tour guide informed us.<\/p>\n The block was closed off and a 1967 (the year Rapuzzi reopened) street scene was recreated with vintage cars provided by community members.<\/p>\n Tranel, Kaplan and Dr. Herbert Frost, director of the National Park Service for Alaska, spoke to a packed crowd at the dedication ceremony, where Karl Gurcke was awarded the Appleman-Judd-Lewis award for NPS employees who excel in cultural resource management. Tom Clark, the grandson of Smith\u2019s last victim, the miner Stewart, was also in attendance.<\/p>\n The highlight was when Soapy Smith emerged from his parlor to be confronted by Frank Reid and Jesse Murphy.<\/p>\n \u201cSmith!\u201d shouted Reid, played by Jeff Brady. \u201cTold you to stay away from down here!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have no right to keep me away,\u201d replied Smith, played by Jonathan Baldwin.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t come any nearer. I\u2019m warning you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor the love of God, don\u2019t shoot!\u201d Smith shouted before the inevitable.<\/p>\n Pop. Pop. Pop<\/em> went the guns in a cloud of smoke. Smith\/Baldwin and Reid\/Brady both ended on the ground, to cheers and laughter from the crowd. Friend and foe then retired to the Red Onion Saloon for the reception.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer and design wizard Randi Spray at randi.spray@capweek.com.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Skagway\u2019s legendary outlaw, Jefferson Randolph Smith, gained his fame for cons like telling newly arrived Gold Rush stampeders that a family member had just telegraphed in distress and required quite a bit of money. The newcomers, unaware that Skagway\u2019s \u201ctelegraph cable\u201d ended just offshore, would rush to pay Smith. His nickname came from another con, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":20667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20666"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}