Jafet Lindeberg

Jafet Lindeberg (born September 12. 1873, died November 1962) came from Kvænangen in Norway. He found gold in Alaska, and became a co-founder of the city of Nome.

Background

Emergency help

In the autumn of 1897, the American congress decided to send help to the gold miners in Klondike. The gold rush had escalated. Thousands of people rallied to the area, most of them completely unfamiliar with the harsh climate. The authorities feared a humanitarian disaster, with famine, epidemics and lawless conditions. It was difficult to send supplies. It was therefore decided that reindeer and able keepers were to be shipped from Norway to Klondike. Reindeer were known as versatile animals, that could be used for food, clothing and transport.

On February 4, 1898, Lindeberg left Alta with the ship Manitoba, heading for New York. He had been hired as a reinkeeper. There were 113 people, 535 reinsdeers, and 250 tons of reindeer lichen on the ship. Upon arriving, he learned that the crisis was not as big as anticipated, and he was freed from his contract.

"The Three Lucky Swedes"

On the Seward peninsula at the Bering Strait he met the Swedes Erik Lindblom and John Brynteson, and the three formed the profitable mining company "Pioneer Mining Co." They also founded the city Nome, where they later made a big find of gold.

The rumors about "The Three Lucky Swedes" spread quickly. The following year, Nome was the subject of a gold rush similar to Klondike.

Late-comers tried to “jump” the claims of the Pioneer Mining Company by filing mining claims over the same ground. A federal judge ruled that the Pioneer Mining Company claims were valid, but some of the claim jumpers gave partial interests in their claims to Washington politicians, who engineered the naming of their own federal judge, Arthur Noyes, to the Nome region. Noyes handed the Pioneer claims over to the claim jumpers, but after Noyes left Nome in disgrace, Lindeberg joined a group of masked vigilantes to seize their properties back from the claim jumpers. [Dan Plazak "A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top" (Salt Lake: Univ. Utah Press, 2006) ISBN 978-0-87480-840-7 (contains a chapter on the theft of Lindeberg's placer claims)]

The claim-jumping incident was the basis for Rex Beach’s best-selling novel "The Spoilers", which was made into a stage play and five times into movies. Japhet Lindeberg lived long enough to see the character based on himself played on the big screen by John Wayne, although Lindeberg modestly said that he didn’t see much resemblance between himself and Wayne’s character in "The Spoilers".

In Nome stands a statue of Jafet Lindeberg and the two Swedes.Lindeberg died in San Francisco, 89 years old.

ee also

* Nome, Alaska

External links

* [http://www.miningswindles.com/html/the_spoilers.html Photographs of Jafet Lindeberg and Nome, Alaska]

References