Charlie Anderson

Charlie Anderson, a Swedish farmer originally from Boston, headed for the Yukon in 1894. He had a harrowing journey with his five companions, one Englishman and four Norwegians. They froze and starved, but finally arrived at a valley in the Yukon called Glacier Creek. Charlie, “Swede” as his friends called him, worked as hired help until he finally managed to become a partner in the Glacier Mine.

Some people hit it big by working hard, learning all they could about geological structures so they could assess where gold deposits might lie, and then staking a claim at what turned out to be a great location. Others just sort of fell into it. Swede Anderson was one of the latter group.

Two miners, Al Thayer and Winfield Oler, had staked out Claim Twenty-nine on the Eldorado in the Klondike Valley. They believed the claim was worthless and there was no gold. They needed funds so they looked for a sucker they could convince to buy their claim. They encountered Swede Anderson in a saloon and bought him drinks until he was falling-down drunk. They then conned him into paying eight hundred dollars for the claim. The next day, the now sober Anderson bullied and pleaded to get his money back but they refused to reverse the sale.

Swede Anderson took more than a million dollars worth of gold out of that claim. He was known thereafter as “the Lucky Swede.” He got married and took his new wife on a trip to Europe. Supposedly that was the promise she insisted on in exchange for marrying him. Another story says he persuader her by presenting her with her weight in gold. Hardly anybody proposes marriage by offering that particular present these days.

They roamed around Paris, London, and then New York before returning to San Francisco, where “The Lucky Swede” built his wife a castle, complete with turrets.

He died in Van Anda, British Columbia, in 1939.