History of Fairbanks, Alaska
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.
[3] 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.
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.
[11] 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.
The Northern Commercial Company built a store to replace Barnette's cabin, and Wickersham recorded a wide range of businesses, including 500 houses and 1,200 people.
[39] This move was followed by others: licensing a telephone company, providing for garbage collection, fire protection, and a one-room school (which shut down later that winter for lack of funds).
[60] Poor investments caused the bank founded by Barnette to fail in January 1911, at a time when it held more than $1 million in deposits from Fairbanks residents.
In 1906, L.A. Nadeau of the Northern Pacific Railroad predicted a railroad link to the ocean would allow gold miners to bring in heavy equipment and process large amounts of low-grade ore. "Not only will the cost of living be cheaper to the miner, but he will be able to get his heavy machinery at a price low enough to enable him to work a vast quantity of low-grade ground, which cannot be touched under present conditions.
[76] The railroad line was extended westward, until it reached the town of Nenana and a construction party working north from Ship Creek, later renamed Anchorage.
The town's dirt roads turned to dust in summer and thick mud in spring and fall, causing problems as Fairbanks' population grew in the 1930s.
[104] Alaska's first commercial aircraft didn't arrive until June 1923, when Noel Wien began flying a Curtiss JN-4 on mail routes between Fairbanks and isolated communities.
"[110] That year, Congress passed the Wilcox National Air Defense Act, which provided for a new airbase in Alaska for cold-weather testing and training.
[116] Fairbanks' economy grew, and the city's second
[113] Fairbanks received word of the attack on Pearl Harbor via civilian shortwave radio operators who passed the news to the U.S. Army base.
[129] To meet demand when Ladd Field was unusable due to fog, an airfield now known as Eielson Air Force Base was built southeast of Fairbanks.
[135] The burgeoning town stopped to commemorate its roots with the Golden Days Festival, a weeklong celebration of Fairbanks history that started to mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of gold.
Residents set off fireworks, an impromptu parade took place down Cushman Street, the city's main road, and an attempt to dye the Chena River gold in celebration instead turned it green.
At a site away from downtown Fairbanks, it features pioneer cabins, historic exhibits, and the steamer SS Nenana, one of the steamboats that traveled Interior Alaska rivers during the gold rush era.
Thirteen major Alaska Native corporations and dozens of smaller ones were created to manage the cash payment and land grants distributed by the federal government under the act.
To meet the demand, Lathrop High School ran in two shifts: one in the morning and the other in the afternoon to teach students who also worked eight hours a day.
[194] Alyeska and its contractors bought in bulk from local stores, causing shortages of everything from cars to tractor parts, water softener salt, batteries and ladders.
This was exacerbated because police officers and state troopers resigned in large groups to become pipeline security guards at wages far exceeding those available in public-sector jobs.
[197] In the frigid temperatures of the winter months throughout the 1970s it was common to see street-walking prostitutes in downtown Fairbanks, clad fully from head-to-toe in luxuriant fur coats (and leaving everything to the imagination).
[198] However, the biggest police issues were drunken brawls and fighting, resulting in a situation akin to the lawlessness associated with the "Wild West" of the American frontier of popular lore.
[198] By 1976, after the city's residents had endured a spike in crime, overstressed public infrastructure, and an influx of people unfamiliar with Alaska customs, 56 percent said the pipeline had changed Fairbanks for the worse.
The Big Dipper Ice Arena, a converted airplane hangar moved from Tanacross in 1969, went through a $5 million renovation in 1981 that allowed it to host the Arctic Winter Games the next year.
A common practice in Fairbanks was for workers to drop their house keys off at local banks before catching a flight out of Alaska, the better to speed the foreclosure process.
[214] In 1984, President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II briefly met in Fairbanks after it was realized that their two separate visits to Asia would cross over Alaska at the same time.
[218] The same year that Fort Knox Mine opened, Alyeska moved 300 jobs from Anchorage to Fairbanks, making the city the base of its operations for the first time in several decades.
