John Nelson (~1855 – 1900)
	
John Nelson was in the Yukon in 1886, ten years before gold was discovered in the Klondike drainage. He and his brother Pete Nelson, Joe Ladue, and Dan Sprague set out from Fort Reliance to prospect to the northeast of the trading post.((Michael Gates, //Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon.// Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994: 22.)) They travelled overland thirty-five miles and reached the Klondike River about forty-five miles up from the mouth, and then travelled up the Klondike. In the first day’s travel they stopped at a bar on the left side of the creek, and then went about three miles further on to a gravel bank about thirty feet high and 400 yards wide. They made a spear out of moose bone fastened it to the end of a pole and fished for salmon during the trip.((Peter Nelson, Snow Family Papers, Alaska State Library.)) They found twenty-five to thirty-cent prospects on one bar but did not consider it significant.((Michael Gates, Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994: 143.))
	
In the winter of 1887/88, John Nelson and Frank Bateau set up a crude blacksmith shop at Forty Mile. While they constructed the shop, Joe Ladue travelled to Fort Nelson, at the mouth of the Stewart River, to get steel and borax for the blacksmith operation. They used moose skin coated with moose tallow for the bellows, a bolder for the anvil and a pole axe for a sledge.((Michael Gates, //Gold at Fortymile Creek: Early Days in the Yukon.// Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994: 48-49.)) John Nelson signed the founding charter of the Yukon Order of Pioneers at Forty Mile in December 1894.((Yukon Archives, D. E. Griffith, “Forty-Milers on Parade.” Coutts coll. 78/69 MSS 087 f.5.))
	
John Nelson moved to Dawson after the Klondike strike. He and Harry Smith built the Klondike Hotel and Nelson managed it. Nelson was also part-owner in Claim No. 34 Eldorado, No. 30 Gold Run, and other claims.((John Gould, "Yukon Order of Pioneers: A History."  Unpublished manuscript.)) Nelson left for the outside in September 1898, travelling with William Lakgette. His friends must have thought he would not be back for they expressed regrets in the local newspaper.(("Personals." //Klondike Nugget// (Dawson), 24 September 1898.)) He went to San Francisco and had one kidney removed and a few months later married in New York City. He and his wife returned to Dawson in June 1899.((John Gould, "Yukon Order of Pioneers: A History."  Unpublished manuscript.)) 

John Nelson had an illness of the heart, lungs, and kidney and he died in 1900 of heart disease. John Nelson’s brother Peter and a cousin, Peter Neilsen, also living in Dawson. In 1983, there was a five-foot-high gravestone and an iron fence around his grave. The funeral expenses were paid for by Mrs. Neilsen.((LMR Vol. 1, pg. 11, 1983 EAYCS # 14; //Klondike Nugget// (Dawson) 12 April 1900; Dawson Cemeteries Database.))