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Boss shanghaier Sullivan’s mining-stock fraud career (Part 1 of 2)
For anyone interested in the shanghaiing of sailors on the old Portland waterfront, the name “Larry Sullivan” needs no introduction. Smooth, polished, well-connected and ruthless, Larry Sullivan was essentially the Boss Tweed of the Portland waterfront from the early 1890s right up to the moment the music stopped. But in 1904, as the upcoming Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition drew near, a reforming spirit was in the Portland air. Thousands of visitors were about to come to Portland and see it for the first time, and the city’s underworld was far too much on public display for that to go well if changes were not made. Larry Sullivan *was* the Portland underworld, and he had good enough political instincts to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Selling his stake in the Portland Club, his gambling house, to fellow underworld tycoon Nate Solomon and closing the doors on his sailors’ boardinghouse, Larry packed up and headed east, looking for fresh fields of endeavor. And, in a rip-roaring Nevada mining boomtown called Goldfield, he found what he was looking for. And it was at The Palace that Larry met one of the most colorful and rascally characters in the history of American con-artistry: George Graham Rice. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)
Published on 3 days, 18 hours ago