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Theodore Henrik “Andy” Anderson (b. 1907)
Andy Anderson was born in Alberta to Norwegian immigrant parents. When he was eight, Andy was intrigued by a book about the Klondike gold rush and at age seventeen he starting working his way north and arrived in the Yukon in 1927. Ove the years, he took occasional jobs to support his prospecting lifestyle saying sometimes one had to work for wages or starve. He refused the government subsidy of up to $900 a year and paid his own bills.1)
In the 1930s, Anderson prospected in the Mount Freegold area and in 1946, he was on the south fork of the Stewart River in record low temperatures. The snow was deep and he took three weeks getting to Mayo when a normal trip took him a week. He worked with the Army Engineers on road construction and then returned to Mayo to run the Silver King Hotel from 1948 to the end of 1949, being bartender, cook and housekeeper. Prospectors could be paid for staking good prospects in cash, stocks and/or royalties. Anderson preferred cash. In 1953, Anderson sold a nickel-copper property over the phone and received $4,000. In 1954, he staked a fluorspar property in northern British Columbia and sold it for cash to Conwest Explorations. Anderson also mined some of his properties himself. He had three copper-zinc-silver claims in the Whitehorse Copper Belt and he ounce mined $900 worth of gold in the Dawson district when the metal was only worth $36 an ounce.2)
In 1961, at age 54, Anderson and Larry Patnode returned to Whitehorse on a float plane after a prospecting trip. Anderson walked into the prop exiting the plane and lost his right arm. He left the territory for a bit but soon returned, having learned how to continue his independent lifestyle.3)