John W. Nordstrom (1871 – 1963)
John Nordstrom was born in Sweden. In 1887, he booked passage for America and arrived in Michigan with $5 in his pocket. He worked in an iron mine, cut wood for a winter, and worked in a coal mine before moving to San Francisco and then up the coast.1)
When the depression hit in 1893 and his savings dwindled, Nordstrom saw the Klondike gold strike as an opportunity. He and two partners bought an outfit and three horses and booked passage on an overcrowded coal freighter. They went over the White Pass trail and built a scow in Bennett City. Leaving Bennett in October they crossed the lakes and travelled down the Yukon River in snowstorms. They built a small cabin half a mile up the Klondike River and Nordstrom stampeded to All Gold Creek but found no gold. He worked on a claim for some months, but his share was nothing. He worked on his own claim and recovered $1,800 in gold. He purchased a claim on Gold Run Creek but found little gold there. Court cases over the original staking of his ground threatened his investment so he sold his claim for $30,000 to Chute and Willis. Nordstrom left the Klondike with $13,000 after expenses. He bought property in Seattle and built houses.2)
In Seattle, Nordstrom invested in a partnership with Carl Wallin, a Swede he had met in the north. Wallin had a shoe repair business in Seattle before the gold rush. Wallin and Nordstrom opened their first store in 1901.3) After a couple of moves, they operated a store on Second Avenue for twenty-five years. They added another store in 1923. Nordstrom retired in 1930 and his three sons bought the business. The sons expanded the business through the following years and by 1962 the Seattle store was the largest single shoe store in America. In 2014, the company was still a family business and was listed on the Forbes 500.4)