Fritz Kloke was born in Marsberg, Westfallia, Germany in 1860. In 1885 he and a friend hired onto a boat in Germany, assuming it worked European waters, but instead landed in the United States. He wrote to his mother from New York City, explaining that he arrived there by accident, or, sooner than he expected. Another letter written to his mother in 1891, from San Francisco, said he had been in Alaska and would return to the Yukon in the spring. While at Forty Mile Creek during the spring of 1893, he ran several trading and mining businesses. In 1903, he returned to the Yukon Territory (probably Dawson). He lived in Alaska until 1905 then moved to a 160-acre farm near Los Angeles, which became a horticultural showplace in the Imperial Valley. He also started a bank in Calexico. In 1907, he married long-time Alaskan friend, Isabella "Belle" Healy Dossel, widow of Captain John Healy. Fritz and Isabelle visited Nome for the last time in 1910. Belle died in 1916; Kloke died three years later in 1919.
From the description of Fritz Kloke photograph collection [graphic], ca. 1892-1905. (Alaska State Library). WorldCat record id: 56117148
