eter J. Cavanaugh was born in Dubuque, Iowa in 1875. At the age of twenty-two, he joined the rush to the Klondike in 1898 and went on to Nome in 1899. While in Nome he met Agnes Ross, born in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania in 1887. She had come to Nome in 1900 with her parents, who operated a small hotel and grocery store in the town. Peter and Agnes were married in 1908, and moved south to the Pacific Northwest. In 1915, they again heard the call of the north, and this time it took them to Sunrise, on Turnagain Arm. Peter was a driller who did some work in the Crow Creek mining area.

That same year they moved to the tent city of Anchorage in time to purchase a lot at the second auction of the townsite. The family lived in a tent while Pete built a log cabin home in between working with the Alaskan Engineering Commission and working on the crews building the Eska, Gold Creek, Hurricane and Nenana bridges. He finished his time with the Alaska Railroad in the maintenance shop in 1936, when he retired.

Peter and Agnes had four children. James was born in 1909 and died in 1992. Emmett C. was born in 1911 and died in 1967. He had two children, Mary Ann and Warren. Catherine Cavanaugh Weimer, born in 1916, had three children, Robert E., Russell and Bonnie Tisler. Norman F. was born in 1923 and died in 1993. He had four children, Patty, Kathleen Holt, Darrell and Peter. Peter J. Cavanaugh died in 1940, and Agnes passed away in 1952. She is buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.