Frederick “Fritz” Kloke (1863 - 1919)
Fritz Kloke was born in Marsberg, Westfallia, Germany.1) His parents were Joseph and Elizabeth (Schirmer). Fritz came to the United States in 1885.2)
In 1892, Kloke wrote to someone in the United States government after he heard from Captain Peterson that there would be reindeer purchased and distributed in Alaska. Kloke was freighting with dogs in the winter from Forty Mile Creek in Alaska and thought that reindeer would much superior for his business. He asked that if reindeer were not available, he would like two cows and a bull. He offered to pay all expenses and suggested that the animals be delivered to St Michael, kept in St. Michael for the winter, and delivered to Kloke in the spring.3)
Kloke was fishing [for grayling] at the mouth of the Klondike River in the spring of 1896. He was drying the fish under a shed of poles covered in canvas.4) At least one person thought that the Dawson townsite staked by Joseph Ladue should have belonged to Kloke who had a fishery and a garden where Dawson grew. Kloke’s ten years spent in the north before 1898 were hard. In one stretch of four years he had only thirty-two pounds of sugar and averaged three or four cans of milk a year. He fried his bacon first and then mixed the grease with flour, thinning it with water, and then fried it. He claimed it tasted a small bit like an omelette. He and two associates drank juniper or rose-leaf tea but still he suffered from scurvy one year and lost all his teeth.5)
Kloke was described as a teamster in an 1896 report from North-West Mounted Police Superintendent Charles Constantine. That summer there were four dog mushers fishing for dog food with nets along the Yukon River between the U.S. Boundary and the Klondike. Kloke’s net was nine miles downriver from Fort Constantine. He was unsuccessful in catching enough fish to feed his twenty-three dogs and he left for Circle City, Alaska in the fall. The salmon run was very poor that year.6)
Kloke was the original locator of Claim No. 9 Above Discovery on Bonanza Creek.7) In the summer of 1897, Fritz Kloke was prospecting in the Dawson area and paid $10 to the government for developing a quartz claim and a mill.8)
In the summer of 1900, Kloke had a working coal mine at Five Fingers Rapids.9) The company of Bleeker, Dejournal, Miltor [Milton?] and Anics leased the Five Finger Coal Mine to Kloke and Webster for the season of 1903. They mined 1,500 tons, 900 of which was shipped to Dawson and the rest lying at the mines. This mine was expected to produce 3000 tons to the area.10)
Kloke left the Yukon in September 1904 to travel to Calexico, San Diego county, California.11) Isabella Mary Dossel arrived in Skagway in 1887. There is an unconfirmed story of her marrying Captain John J. Healy, and after his death marrying family friend Fritz Kloke. Kloke looked after her mining interests. She moved to the Imperial Valley in 1904 and became a prominent member of society. Fritz Kloke and Isabella Mary Dossel were married in 1907 in Los Angeles.12)
The First State Bank of Calexico was incorporated in March 1905. Fritz Kloke was president in 1908 and he was a director with the largest number of shares, holding 143 out of a total of 238.13) In 1911, Kloke was elected a director of the new Imperial Valley Irrigation District. He was carried into office in a unanimous vote of the whole southern end of Imperial county.14) In 1915 Fritz Kloke was the president of the Calexico National Bank and the park superintendent of Calexico.15) In 1916, Mrs. Kloke died of ptomaine poisoning with her husband by her side.16) Fritz Kloke died three years later in Mexico while on a two-month trip to Matzalan regarding land interests.17)