Fairbanks, the Accidental City

Fairbanks exists because life is what happens while you are making other plans.

Transportation was still a problem in 1942

In 1901 the United States Army worked on a trail from Valdez north to Eagle on the Yukon River. Civilians planned a railroad along the same route. None of that would happen, but no one knew that; and, seeing that the proposed trail and railroad would have to cross the Tanana River at their halfway point, entrepreneur and hustler E. T. Barnette decided to open a trading post at the crossing—Tanacross.

Unfortunately, Barnette’s plan depended entirely on navigating the Yukon River and its biggest tributary, the Tanana with steamboats.

Good luck with that.

He shipped trading goods north from San Francisco then he and his wife made their way north to Valdez and up the Army’s trail to all the way to Eagle on the Yukon. They bought a steamboat and headed down the river to meet their supplies where the Yukon emptied into the Arctic Ocean at St. Michael.  Unfortunately, Barnette’s crew didn’t know about the rocks in the Harbor, and they managed to gouge the bottom out of his new steamboat.

Desperate, Barnette explained his plan and his route to the owner of another steamer in the harbor, and a dubious, Captain Adams, agreed to get them as close to Tanacross as he could.

Barnette, his wife, and 130 tons of supplies headed up the Yukon River and then its largest tributary, the Tanana, on Adams’ steamer, but the shallow Tanana stopped them far short of Tanacross. Per their agreement Adams dumped the disappointed Barnette’s and their supplies on the riverbank and steamed away.

Nothing if not stubborn, determined to try again next summer, the Barnette’s spent a wintery March negotiating the long, difficult trail down to Valdez and took ship for Seattle. There they bought and disassembled a shallow draft steamer; shipped it north to the mouth of the Yukon with more supplies; then made their way back north to the Yukon and floated down to meet their new boat.

Their steamer made it no farther up the Tanana than Adams’ steamer had the summer before, the shallow river stopped them a few miles short of their temporary trading post.

But Barnette’s luck suddenly turned. And so did he.

Prospectors had struck gold near the temporary post. Barnette rushed out to stake as many claims as he could, salted some of them to show to visitors, made sure word of the strike spread far and wide. And he settled in to do business in what he hoped would become a new town on the Tanana—a town he named Fairbanks.

A fuller history of Fairbanks