The trader was Captain E.T. Barnette. In August 1901 he was steaming up the Tanana River aboard the sternwheeler Lavelle Young, hoping to plant a trading post far upriver, when low water forced the boat into the shallow Chena and stranded it well short of his goal. Under his contract, the captain put Barnette and his tons of goods ashore right there, on the bank where downtown Fairbanks stands today. Barnette was furious — he was hundreds of miles from where he meant to be — but he had little choice, so he set up shop and waited to see what the country would bring.
What it brought was gold. On July 22, 1902, an Italian prospector named Felix Pedro — born Felice Pedroni — struck pay dirt in the creeks north of Barnette's post, and word raced through the North. Barnette sent his employee Jujiro Wada to carry the news to the miners of Dawson, and the stampede was on; by 1903 hundreds of prospectors had poured into the Tanana Valley and a town was rising on the Chena. Barnette had already chosen the name: at the urging of Judge James Wickersham, he called the place Fairbanks, after Charles W. Fairbanks, a powerful Indiana senator who would soon become vice president under Theodore Roosevelt. The senator never visited, but his name stuck to the gold camp for good.
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.
