Nicholas Fax
Nicholas Fax may have started out farming with his brother John. A 1901 photograph sold as a postcard shows Nicholas and John Fax in their vegetable garden on an island in the Yukon River.1)
Nicholas Fax had a farm on the west bank of the Yukon River across from the mouth of the Klondike River (now called Sunnydale). A 1909 photo shows Fax with greens and potatoes on a scale. The verso inscription says the Klondike potatoes were grown by Fax and sold to restaurants and mines in Dawson and Grand Forks.2) Another 1909 photo of Fax’s potato field has an inscription saying the field is near the Klondike and notes the Dawson Root Cellars where Fax stored potatoes and cabbage to sell later in the year.3) A third photo of Fax in a field of cabbages at Sunnydale was taken for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (A-Y-P), a world’s fair held in Seattle, Washington in 1909. The A-Y-P was originally proposed for 1907 on the tenth anniversary of the Klondike gold rush, but it was postponed because of a competing world’s fair in Jamestown, Virginia that year.4) Another 1909 photo shows Fax’s large oat hay field.5)