Fairbanks Become a Disney Travel Agent Near Me

Fairbanks, Alaska—named for former Indiana Sen. Charles Fairbanks—is truly a frontier. The gateway to the Arctic is spread out on a seemingly endless plain in the Tanana Valley, with only a few downtown high-rises and plenty of log cabins dotting the residential districts.

Fairbanks, 125 mi/200 km south of the Arctic Circle and the northernmost large U.S. city (as well as Alaska's second largest), is a hub for interior Alaska's commerce, education, arts and, more recently, tourism, even in winter. It makes up for the dark winter months, though, by almost constant daylight in summer.

One of Fairbanks' main draws in winter is the northern lights, the colloquial name for the aurora borealis, which means northern dawn. The multicolored displays illuminate the night sky for hours, in colors ranging from yellow to blue to green and even red. Because of the long daylight hours, most summer visitors do not see the northern lights from late May to early August.

Residents cheerfully joke about their weather and field their visitors' endless questions about daylight, or lack of it. The Fairbanks nickname of Golden Heart City, because of its gold-rush history, could just as easily apply to its residents.

Must See or Do

Sights—Golden Heart Plaza and Park; the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; Denali National Park (just around the corner in Alaska terms, although it's 125 mi/201 km southwest of Fairbanks).

Museums—Collections of ethnographic artifacts at the University of Alaska Museum of the North; a perspective on the gold rush at the Pioneer Museum; the Alaska Native Village and Alaska Native Museum.

Memorable Meals—A bucket of king crab at The Pump House Restaurant and Saloon; steak and seafood at Pikes Landing; outstanding Italian food and a romantic ambience at Vallata.

Late Night—Comedy and live concerts at the Blue Loon; jazz and Cuban food at Jazz Bistro on 4th.

Walks—A stroll along the riverside trail at Pioneer Park; the University of Alaska Fairbanks Trail System.

Especially for Kids—Alaskan Tails of the Trail with Mary Shields; panning for gold at Gold Dredge 8; Riverboat Discovery tour; Pioneer Park's Crooked Creek & Whiskey Island Railroad and Sternwheeler Nenana.

Geography

Spread out along the forested floor of Tanana Valley along the banks of the Chena River, Fairbanks is fairly easy to navigate. However, do watch out for a number of one-way streets in the downtown area.

The city's most obvious geographical feature is the Chena River (pronounced CHEE-nah), which winds through the city mostly in an east-west direction. Airport Way lines the southern edge of the city, and College Road forms the northern border. Cushman and Barnette streets, and Steese Highway are the city's main north-south arteries. The heart of downtown sits squarely on the waterfront.

More industrial areas lie north of the river, with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks to the northwest on College Road. Highway 3, the George Parks Highway (Alaskans tend to use road names rather than speaking in numbers), crosses the south side of town, eventually leading to Denali National Park to the southwest and to Anchorage, 358 mi/576 km away.

History

The Fairbanks area was originally a fishing zone for native Athabascans. When the gold rush arrived in the Klondike, prospectors flocked to the region in hopes of striking it rich. In 1901, E.T. Barnette was dumped off his sternwheeler at the present location of First Avenue and Cushman Street when the river became too shallow for the ship to continue up the Chena River. He had planned to start up a general store farther north, where miners were finding gold.

Right after Barnette got off the boat (the landing marked by a small monument and plaque in the yard of the downtown visitors center), Felix Pedro ran into him. Pedro, the Italian responsible for the Fairbanks gold rush, was looking for supplies, and his chance appearance helped push Barnette into building his store where he was rather than move north. Within a year, the gold rush—led by Pedro's discovery—sprang up around Barnette and his trading post, the first non-Native building in the area.

In the early years, Fairbanks turned out more than US$200 million in gold (as much as US$9 million in one year). Many of the men who went there to work their claims built homes and took their families to stay with them. Within five years of its founding, Fairbanks was a town of 12,000 people, with two hospitals, a library, post office, schools, newspapers and various other businesses.

Though the city's economy began to decline, it received a boost in 1911 with the arrival of the Tanana Valley Railroad. The Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines was established in 1922 (it became the University of Alaska at Fairbanks in 1935) and also provided a slight boon for the city.

However, it wasn't until 1968, with the construction of an oil pipeline, that Fairbanks saw considerable growth. In the two years it took to build the 800-mi/1,300-km Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the city's metropolitan population nearly doubled to 65,000. Today, Fairbanks is a gem for visitors and offers many opportunities to peek into the history of this former gold-rush town.

Potpourri

Home to the original Babe the Blue Ox, the Museum of the North on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks has mummified remains of a 36,000-year-old, blue-hued Alaskan steppe bison.

The aurora borealis—or northern lights—can be seen an average of 243 nights a year, although the endless hours of daylight limit summer viewing. Supposedly, children conceived under the aurora are more intelligent. Many airlines run charter flights during the winter months, especially from Japan and Taipei.

Summer daylight hours are frequently referred to as the "midnight sun," but that really means only that the sun is visible at midnight in midsummer. There are 21 hours of daylight at summer solstice, but it's never completely dark then, so technically there is daylight for 24 hours. Conversely, there are only four hours of daylight at winter solstice in December.

For nearly a century, Alaskans have bet on break-up—the exact time that ice in the Tanana River breaks up at the end of winter. Winners have netted more than US$300,000 in the Nenana Ice Classic, named for a town 55 mi/90 km southwest of Fairbanks.

In the period 1928-59, Gold Dredge No. 8, now a visitor attraction, scooped up 7 million ounces in gold.

You'll hear the terms muskeg and ulu (pronounced OO-loo). Muskeg is a squishy, mossy, swampy bog. Trees growing in muskeg are often stunted. An ulu is a handy, almost semicircular broad knife used by Alaska Native Inuit peoples.

The Yukon River is the third-largest in the U.S. and the longest river in Alaska.

More than 1,500 tons of ice are cut from a frozen pond for the Fairbanks winter ice-sculpting competitions.

There are no fireworks on Independence Day in Fairbanks because of nearly 24 hours of sunlight.