Nels Peterson (b. 1850)
Nels Peterson was born on the island of Szaland, Denmark. He immigrated to the States in 1872 and spent two years in the iron mines of Lake Superior and another two in Chicago. He travelled and was engaged in railway construction for nine years. In 1885, he worked on the Canadian Pacific. He mined in British Columbia. He went to Seattle from 1887 to 1894 and worked in the grocery and transfer business and cleared land for city improvements. In June 1894, he went to southern Oregon and prospected and mined for three years.1)
Peterson returned to Seattle in 1897 and outfitted for Alaska. He sailed on the City of Mexico in March and arrived in Dawson in May with ninety-five cents. He worked a month for $15 per day. He located Claim 5 Below on the left limit of Bonanza Creek and was the first man to find pay in the benches of this creek. He borrowed three sluice boxes from Tex Rickard and cleaned up $1100 in three weeks. He became convinced of a layer of white channel gravels. He persuaded a friend, Nathan Kresge to locate a bench claim on the right limit of Big Skookum and kept a half interest. The first strike of the pick uncovered a $10.40 nugget. A pan from the gravel returned $8.00. they made rockers out of tomato boxes and recovered $6,375 in eight days. Two days after they made the strike there were a thousand people on Gold Hill locating claims.2)
Peterson cleaned up his claims in the spring of 1898 and purchased the steamers Bonanza King and Eldorado for $50,000.3) Peterson started the Yukon Flyer Line (YFL) with the two paddlewheelers. The Bonanza King was the renamed sternwheeler Gov. Pingree.4) The steamer Eldorado was the former Philip B. Low. Peterson offered a free ticket from Dawson to Seattle to the first person to spot either boat when the two arrived on their maiden voyage from St. Michael in the fall of 1898. Hundreds climbed the Midnight Dome to watch for the boats, and a pair of the smartest won by signalling from the hill to the main street. The others raced down the hill to find they had been outsmarted. Peterson invested $90,000 in the company and that helped to ruin him.5) Competition with the Canadian Development Co was tough and in the fall of 1900 he was broke in Seattle. The Bonanza King was sold to P. Burns and Company and was acquired by White Pass & Yukon Route in 1901.6)
Peterson sailed for Nome in the spring of 1901. His wife, who he had married in Dawson, had remained in Dawson the previous winter and reached Nome a few days after him with $800 from his Klondike business. Peterson went to Teller and prospected and then returned to Nome. In November 1904, he was partners with John Johnson on a lease on Portland Bench. They drifted 160 feet and reached the pay. It was the richest gravel deposit in the gold fields. A pan from bedrock yielded $1200. In sixty days the claim yielded $413,000. The Petersons had one child, Nels Joseph Peterson, born in 1900.7)