Peter Erickson (b. 1926)

Pete Erickson was interested in geography as a schoolboy in New Zealand and he had a strong urge to travel.¹⁾ Peter Erickson came to the Yukon for six months and stayed for forty-three years.²⁾

In 1966, Pete was working on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon when he read that that year would be the last year of dredging by the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp. Pete quit his job in Whitehorse and moved north to work on Dredge Number 6 on Dominion Creek until it froze up. He then moved on to work at Clinton Creek where an unskilled labourer could earn $2.80 an hour versus the $1.87 an hour they earned on a dredge. At Clinton, he met Pete Grady who later sold him two claims on Hunker Creek. By that time Erickson was working for the government in Dawson, and he worked his claims on the weekends by doing a little hand mining. Based on his government job, the bank loaned him $3,000 and he bought a $4,000 bulldozer. Mining was not very profitable as the price of gold was fixed at a low value and costs were high. By 1974, he was making more on his claim than he was as a government employee so, after he paid off his loan, he and went placer mining full time. Pete and Margaret were married in 1982. They lived in Dawson for the winters and mined on Last Chance Creek from April to the end of September. The claims had been mined before and they found old mining shafts, miner’s boots and dippers, as well as mammoth tusks and other animal bones. The Ericksons mined on Last Chance for fourteen years.³⁾ Pete sold the claims in 1988 and retired to Ashcroft, British Columbia.⁴⁾