Murray Smith Eads (d. 1918)

Murray Eads was born in Kentucky to a prominent family. His uncle was a famous engineer who built the Eads Bridge in St. Louis, the first railway bridge over the Mississippi River. Murray ran a Seattle drug store before he came to Dawson in 1897.¹⁾ He was the acting purser on the sternwheeler Portus B. Weare in 1898.²⁾ He settled in Dawson, managed the Standard and Monte Carlo hotels, and hired Alexander Pantages to tend bar in one of his establishments. Eads married Lulu Mae Johnson, a renowned beauty from Alabama, in 1904. She had come north with a troop of performers hired by Eads. During their marriage, Eads opened the Flora Dora on Front Street. The walls behind the bar were covered with paintings of nudes, and it had a gambling room in the back.³⁾

The Dawson dance halls did not do well in the temperance era and the principal one, the Orpheus, went out of business. The Flora Dora, run by Murray Eads, continued spasmodically for some time longer. In January, the police were successful in getting a conviction against the house for selling liquor to dance hall women. Mrs. Lulu M. Eads, the licensee, was fined $50 and costs and was told that unless the dance hall was cut out entirely, the license would be canceled. In consequence, the dance hall was closed. In May, however, the old Orpheus dance hall started up again under the management of John McCrimmon. The police watched for infractions and finally they were able to prove that the women frequenting the place were prostitutes and that the house was a disorderly one kept for the resort of prostitutes. The manager was arrested and given imprisonment with hard labour. This finally put a stop to dance halls in Dawson.⁴⁾

Eads eventually expanded the Flora Dora and changed the name to the Royal Alexandra. The Eads became pillars of the community.⁵⁾ He was an active member of the Yukon Territorial Liberal Association. He became a major investor inside and outside the Yukon. By the First World War, he was part-owner and secretary-treasurer of the O'Brien Brewing and Malting Company.⁶⁾ He was a major shareholder in the State Bank of Seattle, and travelled every year to the bank's annual meeting. He feared the approaching economic downturn and sold the hotel in Dawson and liquidated his other assets to move south. The couple planned to travel through the recently opened Panama Canal and see relatives in the eastern United States.⁷⁾ They drew up their wills just before they left on the Princess Sophia and drowned when it went down in the Lynn Canal in 1918.⁸⁾ Eads was a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers and the Arctic Brotherhood.⁹⁾