Foreword: The “celebrity culture” that engulfs America today had its roots in the 19th Century, long before motion pictures and television. A major venue for “hero” creation were dime novels. They often narrated fictional accounts of living individuals who had come to public notice through their exploits. Here are presented three “whiskey men” who epitomized that kind of fame and the publicity they engendered.
Few men in their time engendered more printer’s ink than Wyatt Earp. Sometime lawman, sometime gunman, in his own time and up to the present Earp has been the subject of both fact and more often fiction. The number of “dime novels” devoted to his imagined exploits number in the dozens. Ignored, however, is the Wyatt Earp, who is credited with building Nome, Alaska, from a muddy mining camp of tents into a real city.
After gunfights in Arizona, Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, whom Wyatt called “Sadie,” moved around the Far West, finally stopping in Yuma, Arizona. It was there that Earp learned of a gold strike in the small fishing village of Nome, Alaska, not far from the Article Circle. As author Ann Kirschner puts it: “Josephine and Wyatt Earp were drawn to Nome as one more place to seek their fortune.”
In 1899 the couple arrived in Nome. The settlement that greeted them, shown here, must have been discouraging. Largely tents, Nome was five miles long and two blocks wide. The town still lacked docks. The Earps’ steamer was met by row boats who ferried the couple to within 30 feet of the shoreline. From there Josephine was carried ashore on the back of a local. In Nome the Earps found unpaved streets, a treeless landscape, a river filled with stinking sewage, and thick mud everywhere. Finding no suitable hotel, the couple spent the winter in a wooden shack.
In Nome, Earp entered the whiskey trade. He and a partner are credited with constructing the town’s first two-story building, a saloon they called the “Dexter,” left. It immediately was reckoned the largest and most luxurious drinking establishment in Nome. Although he stayed only four years there, Earp’s fame drew dozens of men and women to Nome hoping to strike it rich. His initiative to build the first substantial building in a tent city spurred local development. Grateful residents voted him to the town council. Earp’s saloon served important civic purposes as a clubhouse, town hall and forum for political campaigns. Although Nome had been good to Earp, Earp also had been good for Nome.
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It may be a stretch to call Dr. Frank Powell, aka “White Beaver,” a whiskey man—but only slightly. A medical school graduate and inventor of patent medicines, Powell was peddling nostrums more alcoholic than most whiskeys. Many a boy, fetching the dime novel hidden in the corn crib, thrilled to the adventures of “White Beaver” as in story after story the Western hero overcame all odds to best his evil enemies.
After graduating from medical school, Powell had been named to a government post as surgeon in the Department of the Platte, Nebraska, and later made Medicine Chief of the Winnebago Indians. According to legend, Frank got his name, “White Beaver” from riding into the camp of a hostile group of Indians, in order to inoculate residents against small pox. Others say he got it by rescuing a Sioux princess. Regardless, Powell embraced the title, let his hair grow long, and began to polish his legend.
Powell is depicted here on the cover of Beadle’s Dime Library on the trail of evil-doers. Among his titles were “White Beaver, the Indian Medicine Chief,” “White Beaver’s Red Trail, and “Surgeon Scout to the Rescue.” In fact, much of this period Powell was working as a small town doctor in placid LaCrosse, Wisconsin. He also was putting his energies into mixing up and marketing his highly alcoholic patent medicines.
With the passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1906, Federal authorities were on the trail of White Beaver. They hailed him into court alleging that both “White Beaver’s Cough Cream” and “White Beaver’s Wonder Worker” were in violation of the statute. The cough cream contained morphine, cloroform and 82% alcohol (164 proof), classifying it among the strongest liquors on the market. “Wonder Worker” had similar ingredients and was 150 proof. Powell admitted guilt, paid a $300 fine, and White Beaver’s products disappeared.
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Eastern heroes also could be the stuff of legend. In the early 1890s, the New York City tour buses regularly stopped at the door of a saloon at 114 Bowery Street and passengers rushed inside to see the proprietor who was waiting for them behind the bar. What they witnessed was the suave gent shown here who was eager to tell them the story of his leap off the Brooklyn Bridge and how he lived to tell about it. His name was Steve Brodie.
On the morning of July 22nd, 1886, Brodie said goodbye to his wife, Bridget, and climbed on a wagon that crossing the Brooklyn bridge. Down below friends sat in a rowboat waiting. Bystanders shouted “suicide” as they saw the form of a man preparing to jump. In a moment it was over as the form hit the water. Suddenly the rowboat was moving rapidly toward a man flailing in the river. Brodie’s friends pulled him into the boat and rowed to the Manhattan side of the bridge where Brodie was arrested. Headlines in New York papers the next day gave banner coverage to the story of Stevie Brodie and his jump. Soon comic book and magazine accounts of his daring-do were appearing everywhere.
But there were skeptics. The only real eye witness to the jump was Brodie himself. That did not deter him from opening his saloon right after his release from jail, 0r embarking on a career in vaudeville. One theatrical in 1894 focussed on his exploits. Called “On the Bowery,” it used a set fashioned after his saloon and as a finale had Brodie making a faux jump. One of the playbills from “On the Bowery” depicts the daredevil behind the bar serving a top-hatted customer while a Bowery bum siphons alcohol from a cigar lighter.
As time passed and questions continued to be asked about the veracity of his story, Brodie reacted negatively to the skeptics and the cooling of his fame. He moved to Buffalo, New York, where he opened a new saloon. There he made it known that he contemplated a new stunt — jumping over Niagara Falls. He never did.
Note: These three vignettes are abbreviated from other posts to be found on this website: Wyatt Earp, March 18, 2021; “White Beaver” Dr. Frank Powell, February 25, 2019, and Steve Brodie, October 25, 2019.
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