Peter Eikland (B. 1892)
Peter Eikland was born in Norway and he was listed as a miner at Chisana, Alaska in the 1920 United States census. Pete Eikland and Jack Carroll purchased Bonanza #4 from Nels P. Nelson in 1921. They worked in an open pit that summer and drift-mined the following winter. In 1922 there were nine mines in the district employing about twenty-two men and producing about 1,403 ounces of gold. In 1923, the miners on Bonanza Creek were Miles Atkinson and partner Pete Eikland, Don Greene and partner Joe Davis, Billy James and partner Percy Thornton at the biggest camp on Bonanza #6, and Tony McGettigan also mining on the creek. Chisana City was largely abandoned by 1924. In 1925, the Alaska Road Commission hired Harry Boyden and Pete Eikland to fix up the cabins along the McCarthy-Chisana trail. Pete Eikland was mining Bonanza #3 in 1926.1)
Eikland and William Blair met in Alaska, and they came into the Yukon together to trap and prospect.(Eric N. Foster, Mile 1202: Life along the Alaska Highway. Stuart Channel Publishing, 2012: 27, 30-31.)) Both men married First Nation women. Pete and Mary and the Blairs were living at Fry Pan Lake, about three miles from Tazamona Lake in the 1940s. The family moved to Snag in 1945 and lived there until about 1949 when they moved to Haines Junction so the children could go to public school. The Eiklands moved to Beaver Creek in 1953 or ’54.2)