William Dikeman

William A. 'Bill' Dikeman, described in accounts of the rush as a Nebraskan of German descent, is one of the more elusive figures of the Alaskan gold rushes, remembered almost entirely for a single momentous strike. In 1908 he partnered with Nova Scotia-born miner John Beaton to prospect the remote Iditarod River country of southwestern Alaska. After an unrewarding summer, the pair took a steam launch as far up the river as the water allowed, beached it, and built a cabin from which they kept prospecting into the winter.

On Christmas Day 1908, Dikeman and Beaton found gold at a depth of about twelve feet near the head of Otter Creek, a tributary of the Iditarod River. When word reached the outside in 1909, it triggered Alaska's last major gold stampede. The towns of Iditarod and Flat sprang up to serve the diggings, and Otter Creek turned out to hold the widest paystreak ever mined in Alaska. Dikeman Creek and a short-lived river landing called Dikeman were named for him.

Unlike Beaton, who stayed and mined at Flat for decades, Dikeman is reported to have sold his claims to the Guggenheim-backed Yukon Gold Company soon after the big companies entered the camp, and he then left only a faint trail in the historical record; his birth and death dates are not reliably documented. His name survives on the map of the Iditarod country and in every history of the rush his discovery began.