For a few years Fairbanks was one of the richest gold camps in the North. The easy creek gold gave way to deep, industrial mining — giant gold dredges that chewed through the frozen ground and left long gravel tailings still visible today, with Gold Dredge 8 preserved as a landmark of the era. The boom faded as the best ground was worked out, and the population rose and fell with the price of gold, but mining never entirely left: the Interior is still Alaska's gold country. The dredges that sit quiet in the hills are the town's wooly mammoths — perfectly preserved in the dry, cold air, monuments to the rush that made the place.
Our Fairbanks logo carries the distressed Alaska bear above "Alaska Territory — Est. 1959," the shared retro emblem of our Alaska towns; the bear stands for the wild Interior country the gold-seekers pushed into, and 1959 marks the year Alaska joined the Union as a state. Rendered in worn black-and-white, like a stamp on a miner's crate or an outfitter's sign, it ties Fairbanks to every other Alaska town we make. What makes this one Fairbanks is the story behind the brand — the grounded riverboat, the gold strike, and the city that grew up golden-hearted under the northern lights.
Why People Visit Fairbanks
Visitors come to Fairbanks for the aurora — the city's spot under the auroral oval is hard to beat — and stay for the layered Interior story: gold dredges and frontier cabins, a northern university and big-sky wilderness in every direction. It is the gateway to Denali and the Arctic, with hot springs and ice art for the winter and the Midnight Sun for the summer. Equal parts gold-rush heritage and far-north spectacle, Fairbanks rewards anyone drawn to the heart of Alaska.
