NORTH TO ALASKA

The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax, #6

by

PRESTON LEWIS

Genre: Historical Fiction / Western / Humor

Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing

Date of Publication: August 5, 2020

Number of Pages: 414

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WEALTH AND FAME IN THE WILD WEST ARE WHAT LOMAX SEEKS . . . HIS OWN BAD LUCK IS WHAT STANDS IN HIS WAY.

Swindled out of a mining fortune in Colorado and blamed for an ensuing murder, H. H. Lomax two decades later must finally face up to his past in Skagway, Alaska. Along the way, he encounters legendary madam Mattie Silks, suffragist Susan B. Anthony, novelist Jack London, and a talking dog.

To survive his previous missteps and avoid a prison sentence for theft, Lomax must outshoot infamous Western conman Soapy Smith, outwit an unrelenting Wells Fargo investigator, and outrun Shotgun Jake Townsend, the greatest frontier assassin who never was.

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1. In May of 1898, flamboyant western conman Jefferson “Soapy” Smith set up his “business” inside this vacated bank building, which became the center of his fleecing operations for the ensuing three months of his life. The building was purchased in 1935 by a Skagway tourism promoter and served as a local attraction. The building was donated to the National Park Service in 2008 and refurbished.

2. After his death, Skagway citizens refused to allow Soapy Smith to be buried in the city cemetery. Instead, he was interred just outside the graveyard’s boundaries. His grave and that of his purported killer, Frank H. Reid, remain major Skagway tourist attractions to this day.

3. Unlike Soapy’s simple tombstone, which has been replaced several times, an imposing monument marks the grave of his purported killer, Frank H. Reid. Current research raises doubts whether Reid was the actual killer, but Skagway’s citizens of the time credited him with the death and showed their appreciation with this monument inscribed: “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.”

4. The Skagway Centennial Statue commemorates the hundred-year anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush and its impact on Skagway. The statue represents a Tlingit packer guiding a prospector or stampeder up the White Pass Trail. Skagway’s name is a variation of the Tlingit word “Skagua” for “windy place.”

5. Near White Pass Summit, Alaska, a “Trail of 98” sign marks the treacherous trail that prospectors traveling from Skagway to the Yukon had to navigate with some two thousand pounds of supplies and equipment. Thousands of “stampeders”, as they were called, made the difficult trek in hopes of finding gold in the Klondike.

6. Remnants of the White Pass trail through the rugged Alaskan territory are still visible today from the White Pass and Yukon railroad that parallels the original route into Canada. The route from Skagway to the chain of lakes at the headwaters of the Yukon River in British Columbia was so difficult that it was sometimes called “Dead Horse Trail” for all the animals that died along the route.

7. Showgirls dangle their wares outside the second-floor windows of a local theater, recalling Skagway’s lawless past and promoting the “The Days of ’98 Show” that relives the tumultuous days of Soapy Smith, Alaska’s most notorious conman, since 1923. The vaudevillian musical explores his felonious life and dramatic demise on a pier in early Skagway.

8. Tourism is the major industry in contemporary Skagway, drawing thousands of visitors each summer to enjoy the town’s lawless history during the Klondike Gold Rush. Here visitors and yellow tour buses advance down Broadway, the town’s major street.

9. An abandoned railroad bridge along the original White Pass and Yukon railway spans the rugged territory between Skagway and British Columbia. Construction on the railroad began in 1898 for the route that served the transportation and mining needs of the region for nine decades, until it was abandoned in 1982. The line was designated an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1994.

10. What were once the mudflats on Skagway’s shoreline have been dredged and replaced by piers that draw cruise ships and thousands of tourists to the region each summer to enjoy the Alaskan cool and the colorful history of Skagway during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of thirty novels. In addition to his two Western Writers of America Spurs, he received the 2018 Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Western Humor for Bluster’s Last Stand, the fourth volume in his comic western series, The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax. Two other books in that series were Spur finalists. His comic western The Fleecing of Fort Griffin received the Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association for best creative work on the region.

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TWO WINNERS: 1ST PRIZE: Signed copies of North to Alaska and First Herd to Abilene; 

2ND PRIZE: Signed Copy of North to Alaska.

OCTOBER 20-30, 2020

(US ONLY)

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