Soapy Smith: The Life and Legacy of the Wild West's Most Infamous Con Artist

Before there was Charles Ponzi, there was Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II. The famed Old West con artist and gangster's criminal career ranged from Texas to Alaska, from Denver to the Klondike. But Smith was not predestined to become a criminal; if genetics and environment typically determine one’s destiny, he could have become a farmer, a lawyer, or a politician. He was born in Coweta County, Georgia, on November 2, 1860, to Jefferson Randolph Smith, Jr., and Emily Dawson Smith, right as the Southern society his family was a part of was on the verge of suffering the cataclysm of the Civil War.

Like many men in the years after the Civil War, Soapy would make his way west, where frontier towns often popped up immediately and were established long before the law could reach them. At the same time, the Civil War had come less than 15 years after the California Gold Rush brought an estimated 300,000 people to the Pacific Coast, with men dangerously trekking thousands of miles in hopes of making a fortune.

This was a pattern that would repeat itself across the West anytime a mineral discovery was made, from the Southwest and Tombstone to the Dakotas and Deadwood. Of course, it was all made possible by the collective memory of the original gold rush, and when gold was discovered in the Yukon and Alaska almost 50 years after the rush in California, it drew tens of thousands of prospectors despite the unforgiving climate.   In most places where miners showed up, the real money lay in “mining” the miners, something Soapy Smith would quickly come to understand and use to his advantage. Utilizing a famous con involving soap “prizes,” Soapy would earn his nickname while also possessing outsized influence in various forms of swindling, from shady political dealings to outright fraud. His reputation as a criminal began to spread, yet he still plied his trade across the frontier.