David Strandberg (1875 – 1949)

David Strandberg was born near the village of Halmstad, Sweden. He emigrated to the United States at age twenty and worked in the coal mines and forests of Pennsylvania and Minnesota before moving to Shelton, Washington. He attended Wilson’s Business College in Seattle where he learned bookkeeping. In 1898, David and his brother Charley came north over the Chilkoot Pass. David and partners Alex Matheson and Jim Lund mined the left limit of Claim #5 Below Discovery on Dominion Creek using large ore cars on a 100-yard rail track from an open pit to sluice runs in the creek. They found a twenty-ounce nugget, one of the largest found to date in the Klondike. In 1905, David and Charley Sandberg joined Girard Johanson and his family in moving to the Fairbanks, Alaska goldfields. They mined good ground in the Ester Dome area until 1910 when David and his wife Jenny Johanson, Charley Strandberg, and Girard Johanson and his wife moved on to the Iditarod Basin. David and Jenny Strandberg became highly regarded pioneer citizens of Anchorage.¹⁾