When we returned from our drive up the Klondike Highway to Fraser BC, we stopped at the north end of Skagway. There, a short hike up through the Gold Rush Cemetery brought us to a lovely little waterfall, Lower Reid Falls.
The waterfall is named after Frank H. Reid, the ‘good guy’ (by most accounts), in an historic gunfight in 1898. He shot the other participant, or ‘bad guy,’ a con man named Jefferson Randolf (Soapy) Smith, in “self-defence,” in the back (see what I’m doing here?) Reid’s grave has an elaborate headstone, but Smith’s (just outside of the perimeter of the cemetery) tersely states his name, date of death and age, not even hinting at his side of the gunfight story.
Many of the graves are surrounded by intricately-carved fencing and sport colourful stories about the occupants’ advertised and actual occupations and circumstances of death.
