Fairbanks

Fairbanks began with gold discoveries and river trade in the Tanana Valley. In 1901, Felix Pedro and Tom Gilmore were panning creeks in the wilderness while trader E. T. Barnette sought a trading-post site, and after shallow water stopped the sternwheeler LaVelle Young, Barnette's party unloaded supplies on the south bank of the Chena River. That camp supplied Pedro and Gilmore, who found gold about 20 miles north in the summer of 1902, drawing people into the Interior by foot, riverboat, and dog sled. The settlement grew further in 1903 when Judge James Wickersham made the new city his headquarters, proposed the name Fairbanks for Senator Charles Fairbanks of Indiana, oversaw a courthouse, and established the city as the judicial seat of the new mining district. Fairbanks was incorporated on November 10, 1903, and A. J. Nordale was selected as its first mayor in 1910. Although the valley held over 10,000 people by then, the nearby gold was declining, and about 1,000 remained ten years later. Growth returned in the 1920's with completion of the federal Alaska Railroad to Fairbanks, establishment of an agricultural and mining college under first president Charles E. Bunnell, and renewed productivity in gold mining through a large mechanical dredge used by the F.E. Company. During World War II, the Japanese invasion of the U.S. Territory of Alaska spurred construction of Ladd Field near Fairbanks and the Alcan Highway, the first land link between the United States and its territory, and lend-lease aircraft were processed through Ladd Field before Russian pilots flew them across Siberia to the European front. In the 1950's, construction of Distant Early Warning (DEW Line) radar stations across Alaska boosted the city's economy, and in 1959 Alaska became the 49th state. In 1967, Fairbanksans marked the 100th anniversary of the purchase of Alaska from Russia with a state-wide celebration at Alaskaland Pioneer Park, but a devastating flood on August 14 abruptly ended the festivities. In 1968, a giant oil field was discovered on Alaska's North Slope, and Fairbanks became a major supply center; in 1977, oil began flowing through an 800-mile-long, 48-inch pipeline, with Fairbanks at its midpoint and central to construction of the project.

Farmers Loop, Alaska · United States