The Iron Trail

After five years of unsuccessful prospecting he turned to writing. His second novel The Spoilers (1906) was based on a true story of corrupt government officials stealing gold mines from prospectors which he witnessed while he was prospecting in Nome Alaska. The Spoilers became one of the best selling novels of 1906. His adventure novels influenced by Jack London were immensely popular throughout the early 1900s. Beach was lionized as the Victor Hugo of the North but others found his novels formulaic and predictable. Critics described them as cut from the he-man school of literature. Historian Stephen Haycox has said that many of Beachs works are mercifully forgotten today. One novel The Silver Horde (1909) is set in Kalvik a fictionalized community in Bristol Bay Alaska and tells the story of a down on his luck gold miner who discovers a greater wealth in Alaskas run of salmon (silver horde) and decides to open a cannery. To accomplish this he must overcome the relentless opposition of the salmon trust a fictionalized Alaska Packers Association which undercuts his financing sabotages his equipment incites a longshoremens riot and bribes his fishermen to quit. The story line includes a love interest as the protagonist is forced to choose between his fiancée a spoiled bankers daughter and an earnest roadhouse operator a woman of questionable virtue. Real-life cannery superintendent Crescent Porter Hale has been credited with being the inspiration for The Silver Horde but it is unlikely Beach and Hale ever met. After success in literature many of his works were adapted into successful films; The Spoilers became a stage play then was remade into movies five times from 1914 to 1955 with Gary Cooper and John Wayne each playing Roy Glennister in 1930 and 1942 respectively. The Silver Horde was twice made into a movie as a silent film in 1920 starring Myrtle Stedman Curtis Cooksey and Betty Blythe and directed by Frank Lloyd; and a talkie version The Silver Horde (1930) that starred Jean Arthur Joel McCrea and Evelyn Brent and was directed by George Archainbaud. Beach occasionally produced his films and also wrote a number of plays to varying success.