The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. The area had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but a permanent settlement was not established at the site of Fairbanks until the start of the 20th century.
The discovery of gold near Barnette's trading post caused him to turn what had been a temporary stop into a permanent one. The gold caused a stampede of miners to the area, and buildings sprang up around Barnette's trading post. In November 1903, the area's residents voted to incorporate the city of Fairbanks. Barnette became the city's first mayor, and the city flourished as thousands of people came to search for gold during the Fairbanks Gold Rush.
By the time of World War I, the easy-to-reach gold was exhausted and Fairbanks' population plunged as miners moved to promising finds at Ruby and Iditarod. Construction of the Alaska Railroad caused a surge of economic activity and allowed heavy equipment to be brought in for further exploitation of Fairbanks' gold deposits. Enormous gold dredges were built north of Fairbanks, and the city grew throughout the 1930s as the price of gold rose during the Great Depression. A further boom came during the 1940s and 1950s as the city became a staging area for the construction of military depots during World War II and the first decade of the Cold War.
In 1968, the vast Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was discovered in Alaska's North Slope. Fairbanks became a supply point for exploitation of the oil field and for construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which caused a boom unseen since the first years of Fairbanks' founding and helped the town recover from the devastating 1967 Fairbanks Flood. Fairbanks became a government center in the late 1960s with the establishment of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, which took Fairbanks as its borough seat. A drop in oil prices during the 1980s caused a recession in the Fairbanks area, but the city gradually recovered as oil prices climbed during the 1990s. Tourism also became an important factor in Fairbanks' economy, and the growth of the tourism industry and the city continues even as oil production declines.
Before Fairbanks
Though there was never a permanent Alaska Native settlement at the site of Fairbanks, Athabascan Indians have used the area for thousands of years. An archaeological site excavated on the grounds of the University of Alaska Fairbanks uncovered a Native camp about 3,500 years old.Gibbon, Guy E. and Ames, Kenneth M. Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, 1998. p. 116 From evidence gathered at the site, archaeologists surmise that Native activities in the area were limited to seasonal hunting and fishing.Gold Rush Town, p. 65 In addition, archeological sites on the grounds of nearby Fort Wainwright date back 10,000 years.U.S. Army. "Cultural resources at Fort Wainwright" , www.usarak.army.mil. March 18, 2009. Accessed August 5, 2009. Arrowheads excavated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks site matched similar items found in Asia, providing some of the first evidence that humans arrived in North America via the land bridge.
The first recorded exploration of the Tanana Valley and the Tanana River did not take place until 1885, but historians believe Russian traders from Nulato and Hudson's Bay Company traders ventured into the lower reaches of the Tanana and possibly the Chena River in the middle of the 19th century.McKennan, Robert A. "Athapaskan groups of central Alaska at the time of white contact", Ethnohistory Quarterly. Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 1969). p. 335 In 1885, Henry Tureman Allen of the U.S. Army led the first recorded expedition down the length of the Tanana River, charting the Chena River's mouth along the way.Crooked Past, p. vii
In July 1897, the first news of the Klondike gold strike reached Seattle, Washington, triggering the Klondike Gold Rush.Crooked Past, p. 1 Thousands of people boarded steamships heading north to the goldfields. Some of these travelers sailed around the western tip of Alaska and up the Yukon River to Dawson City (site of the goldfields) rather than take an arduous overland trip across the Boundary Ranges.Crooked Past, p. 5
One of these adventurers was E.T. Barnette, who intended to establish a trading post at Tanacross, Alaska, where the Valdez-Eagle Trail crossed the Tanana River.Crooked Past, pp. 18–19 He hired the steamer Lavelle Young to transport him and his supplies, and they began their trip upriver in August 1901.Crooked Past, p. 21 After turning into the Tanana from the Yukon, the steamboat ran into low water. After venturing upstream several miles, the boat reached an impassable point. Barnette suggested the Chena River (then called the Rock River) might be a slough of the Tanana and a way around the low water.Crooked Past, pp. 22–23 About from the mouth of the Chena, the Lavelle Young again ran into an impassable stretch of river. The captain of the Young did not want to travel downstream with a heavy load because of the danger posed by the extra mass. He therefore unloaded Barnette's cargo on August 26, 1901, with an irate Barnette assisting.Crooked Past, p. 24
Barnette began building a cabin at a site he named "Chenoa City", and he sold supplies to two prospectors, Felix Pedro and Tom Gilmore, who were in the area.Crooked Past, p. 25 Barnette traded for furs, then traveled to Valdez via dog team with his wife and three other men. The mountain pass they traveled through was later named Isabel Pass in honor of Barnette's wife. From Valdez, he returned to St. Michael, where he built a steamboat, the Isabelle, and began sailing up the Yukon in August 1902.Crooked Past, p. 34 He intended to move his supplies to Tanacross, but when he arrived at his trading post on the Chena River, he changed his mind. Felix Pedro had discovered gold.
Origins of Fairbanks Before Barnette traveled upriver with the Isabelle, he met Judge James Wickersham in St. Michael. Wickersham was the judge for the federal Third Judicial District, which stretched from the North Slope to the Aleutian Islands.Crooked Past, p. 29 Wickersham was impressed with Barnette and his plan to establish a trading post at Tanacross. He suggested Barnette name his settlement Fairbanks, after Charles W. Fairbanks, the senior Senator from Indiana. Barnette liked the idea and later said, "If we should ever want aid at the national capital, we would have the friendship, at least, of someone who could help us."Crooked Past, p. 32 When Barnette heard of Pedro's gold strike, he transferred the name for his planned Tanacross store to the settlement on the Chena River and convinced the people with him to accept the name.Crooked Past, pp. 38–39
When Barnette and the Isabelles crew heard of Pedro's discovery, they immediately fled the boat and the settlement to stake claims on creeks and likely gold-bearing spots north, near the mountain and creek Pedro named after himself.Crooked Past, p. 38 Marking a claim was simple. Each man could pick a set amount of space, which was marked with posts at each corner, hence "staking" the claim.De Windt, Harry. Through the Gold Fields of Alaska to Bering Straits. Chatto & Windus, 1898. pp. 294–296 Each claim had to be listed by a federal recorder. When Barnette and the crew of the Isabelle were staking claims, Barnette proclaimed himself the interim recorder until an official one could be brought to the area. Although they also recorded their claims with Barnette, most men also reported their claims at the official office in Circle. To maximize his gain, Barnette had power of attorney for several relatives in Ohio. He staked claims in their names, thus giving him authority over a large portion of what was believed to be the gold-bearing terrain.
Word of Pedro's discovery spread during the months that followed Barnette's arrival in September 1902. In December, he wrote to a friend in Seattle, "A message came yesterday that 1,000 people had left Nome during the last three days for here. I look for half of Dawson here before spring."Crooked Past, p. 40 In January 1903, Barnette's cook, Jujiro Wada, arrived in Dawson City with word of the gold find. On January 17, 1903, the Yukon Sun newspaper ran the headline "RICH STRIKE MADE IN THE TANANA" across most of its front page, spurring miners from the Yukon to stampede to Fairbanks in the first big rush of the settlement's history.Crooked Past, p. 42
Boom
When the miners from Nome, Dawson, Rampart, and other places arrived in the Tanana Valley, they were disappointed with what they found. Hundreds of claims were staked, but none were close to Pedro's discovery claims, which had been taken by the crew of the Isabelle and other early arrivers.Crooked Past, p. 51 Adding to the pressure on claiming land were men who, like Barnette, had power of attorney rights for others, and could thus make multiple claims. The Dawson Daily News reported that one man claimed 144 portions of apiece.Crooked Past, p. 52 Around Barnette's trading post, town lots were claimed for $2.50 apiece, and there was fierce competition for the choicest spots.Crooked Past, p. 50 At the mouth of the Chena River, a competing settlement, named Chena, sprang up when two traders moved their store to the junction of the two rivers. Land speculation was fierce in Chena, where claims were frequently stolen and had to be enforced with firearms.
Accounts vary, but historians estimate that by spring 1903, between 700 and 1,000 men arrived in the Tanana Valley. This put an enormous strain on Barnette's stock of food, which rapidly rose in price with demand. Miners objected to Barnette charging $12 per bag of flour and requiring them to buy cases of canned food. They gathered outside his store and demanded he lower his prices or they would burn it down. He responded that he had riflemen inside the building, and both groups reached a compromise.Crooked Past, p. 54 Shortly afterward, Barnette headed south with his wife on a dog team, intending to gather investors to purchase more supplies.Crooked Past, p. 55
In April, Judge Wickersham arrived on a trip looking for a location for the courthouse, jail, and government offices for the Third District courts. He later described his first view of the settlement: "A half-dozen new squat log structures, a few tents ... a small clearing in the primitive forest—that was Fairbanks as I first saw it on April 9, 1903."Wickersham, p. 182 Wickersham examined Chena as a potential site for the government offices, but he settled on Fairbanks, partially because Barnette's partner and brother-in-law, Frank Cleary, gave Wickersham a choice piece of land valued at between $1,500 and $2,000.Crooked Past, p. 58 Wickersham asked Cleary to name the two main streets in town Cushman and Lacey, after U.S. Representatives Francis W. Cushman of Washington and John F. Lacey of Iowa.
Wickersham estimated 500 people in town, and another count estimated 1,000, with 387 houses under construction, six saloons, and no churches.Crooked Past, p. 59 Before spring arrived, Wickersham published the first newspaper in the settlement—the Fairbanks Miner—on a typewriter. It sold seven copies at $5 per copy. But even as the walls of Wickersham's courthouse were going up, dissatisfied miners were leaving the area. Hundreds left on rafts going downriver or steamers going to Dawson City. By June 1903, cabins on city lots were selling for as little as $10.Crooked Past, p. 60 Meanwhile, Barnette sold two-thirds of his store to the Alaska Commercial Company and arranged for the establishment of a post office at his settlement.Crooked Past, p. 62