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Fairbanks is the largest inland city in Alaska, and it is one of the state’s largest cities after Anchorage. The presence of indigenous people in the area goes back a long way, but there was no real settlement here until the American founding of the city in 1901.
The town’s location is due to a coincidence where Captain Elbridge Truman Barnette was a passenger on a steamer that ran aground just after attempting to sail up the Chena River. Barnette disembarked and he was persuaded by gold diggers of the place’s values. Barnette established a trading post here and it grew rapidly with new settlers.
Today, more than 30,000 live in Fairbanks, which lies beautifully along the meandering course of the Chena River towards the mouth of the larger Tanana River southwest of downtown. The climate is continental with cold winters and hot summers, and there are great experiences waiting in nature around the city, which is connected by roads to Alaska and Canada and by rail to Anchorage.
There is much to see and do around Fairbanks. A trip on the Alaska Railroad is popular, as are trips in the winter for northern lights and winter sports. You can also sail on the Chena River with a paddle steamer through the city and take a walk in the center, where the oldest houses take you back to the gold mining era.
Pioneer Park is a place in Fairbanks, which takes you back in time to the Alaska of pioneer days on a large area. The park is built as a historic village with a mix of museums, exhibits and activities from many parts and periods of Fairbanks’ and Alaska’s history.
You can e.g. see houses from old downtown Fairbanks and a number of old logger houses that have been moved to Pioneer Park, so that they together give a fine impression of life in the early years of the city after its founding. There are also objects from the gold mining era, which defined Fairbanks as well, and you can visit the paddle steamer SS Nenana, which was built in the town of Nenana in 1933 and sailed on the Yukon River and other waterways to 1957.
In Pioneer Park, you can visit the Harding rail car that in 1923 brought US President Warren G. Harding to the Mears Memorial Bridge at Nenana to mark the completion of the Alaska Railroad. In the park, there is also a narrow-gauge train that you can board for a ride.
In Pioneer Park, there are often several events, and in the summer there is also music and singers, which help to give a particularly good atmosphere in the park located along the Chena River, where Fairbanks’ history began. The park was established in 1967 with the name Alaskaland to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the US purchase of Alaska.
Golden Heart Plaza is a square that is almost like the center of Fairbanks, with a great location along the south bank of the Chena River. It is a space that is used as a meeting place, and it also functions as a gathering place for most large outdoor events that take place in the city.
For many years, Fairbanks did not have a kind of unifying space, and the initiative for the Golden Heart Plaza was taken in 1984. Three years later, the place was completed. In the center of the square you can see Malcolm Alexander’s sculpture called Unknown First Family. There is also a bell tower and some nice stairs and terraces leading to the Chena River.
At this museum you get an excellent introduction to the state of Alaska and its people, culture, art, flora, fauna and much more. The museum’s exhibitions are interesting, and they are a really good way to get a lot of impressions and a lot of knowledge in a short time about the largest state in the US. You can e.g. see local arts and crafts, gold finds and wildlife specimens.
The museum building itself is also worth seeing, and it stands as one of Fairbanks’ and Alaska’s architectural icons. It was the architect Joan Soranno who, together with a team, designed the building, whose lines were inspired by Alaska’s nature with mountains, glaciers, rivers and northern lights.
In front of the Museum of the North, the landscape opens up in a colossal panorama, where you can see the area around Fairbanks and to the Alaska Range and Mount Denali. It’s a magnificent view, and many also enjoy it from the Alaska Range Overlook, a viewing platform about 200 meters east of the Museum of the North along Yukon Drive.
Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center is a place to get a comprehensive introduction to Alaska’s cultural history and natural history through films and dioramas, which show examples of the state’s peoples, landscapes and wildlife in the interior. In the exhibition you can also see various pictures and objects from the area’s history.
There are also several activities and performances in the center. You can thus be lucky to experience traditional song, music and dance, and there are continuous artisans demonstrating their skills.
Old City Hall is one of Fairbanks’ former public administration buildings. Built in Art Deco in 1935 in reinforced concrete, the building housed the city’s administrative offices and also the police station and fire station. Over time, the house was expanded in line with the need for more space for the administration. The Old City Hall had its original function until 1994, when the administration was moved to the Main School building.
Today, the Fairbanks Distilling Company is located in the old City Hall building. It is a distillery known for producing award-winning vodka on potatoes. You can visit the distillery and taste the production and look at the old building from which Fairbanks was governed for many years.
The Fairbanks Community Museum is an interesting place to visit if you want to learn more about Fairbanks’ history and many of the events that have developed the city. You can e.g. see exhibits about life in Fairbanks in the winter and films about the area’s sled dogs.
Here is also information about the Klondike gold rush that brought many gold miners to the region. You can learn about the flood that hit Fairbanks in 1967 as well, see a miner’s cabin and much more. The museum is located in the Co-op Plaza building.
Fairbanks City Hall is the present town hall, originally built as the Main School in 1934. And in fact, the city’s primary school had already been here from 1906 to 1932, but it burned down and a new one had to be built. Like several other buildings, the Main School was built in reinforced concrete to increase fire safety, and the school opened as the most modern school in Alaska.
The Main School was expanded several times in line with the town’s development, as the school was the only public school in the town until 1951. The children attended the Main School until 1976, when the building was converted into administration for the city government, and since 1996 the city hall has been the seat of Fairbanks’ city government.
In front of the city hall you can see a sculpture called Il Ponte or The Bridge. It was a gift from Fairbanks’ twin town in Italy, Fanano. Fanano is the town where Felice Pedroni was born in 1858. He went to Alaska in the early 1890s to look for gold. On July 22, 1902, he found gold in Pedro Creek north of Fairbanks, an event that started the gold rush in the Fairbanks area.
The Old Federal Building is a former government building in Fairbanks. It was built in 1933 in art deco with many typical elements in the architecture. It was Washington D.C. architect George N. Ray who designed the building.
The Old Federal Building was constructed to house several government agency offices. From the opening, a federal court, a post office and various federal offices were located here. Since then, the large building has been converted to private offices.
Co-op Plaza is a building that takes its name from the Co-op supermarket, which is no longer located here. The house has a past as The Empress Theatre. The theater was built in 1927 as Fairbanks’ first reinforced concrete building. The construction was the subject of great debate at the time, because many believed that the concrete could not withstand the cold winters of interior Alaska.
The Empress Theater was built with 630 seats, but the opening on 25 August 1927 welcomed 1,300 guests. The theater was in operation until 1961, and since then, together with the neighboring building, built as the Co-op Drug Store in 1934, it has been redeveloped as a center with various shops and eateries.
In Fairbanks, several Art Deco buildings can be seen in the area between Cushman Street and Lacey Street, and the Lacey Street Theater is a good example of this architectural style. The relatively large new buildings changed the streetscape of Fairbanks from the original gold mining town to a modern city.
The Lacey Street Theater was built in 1939 by Austin E. Lathrop, who owned several other theaters. In 1966, the interior of the theater burned, with only the lobby escaping serious damage. However, the theater was reconstructed and was in operation until 1981. During the reconstruction, the beautiful Art Deco exterior was preserved, and today you can visit the Fairbanks Ice Museum in the distinctive building.
Fairbanks is located in interior Alaska which is an area characterized by snow, ice and cold winters. The ice is the focal point at the Fairbanks Ice Museum, where you step into a world of ice in the former Lacey Street Theater.
At the museum you can see beautiful ice sculptures and working ice artists with their tools, who create the frozen art objects that are beautifully illuminated in the museum’s exhibitions. You can also get a closer look at the northern lights with the museum’s Aurora Show. The museum is housed in the historic Lacey Street Theatre, from which you can still see the original lobby.
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was built in 1904 as the first Catholic church in interior Alaska. It was originally located on Dunkel Street, but in the winter of 1911-1912 it was moved to its present location on the north side of the Chena River.
During the first decades, the church was expanded on several occasions. The first extension was in 1914, and in 1926-1928 Immaculate Conception had the current glass mosaics installed. Today, the church stands atmospherically in the streetscape as one of the older buildings in Fairbanks.
Fairbanks Depot is the name of the railway station in Fairbanks. From here you can travel with the famous trains of the Alaska Railroad, which bear the names Denali Star and Aurora Winter Train. Both trains run between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and they are popular with tourists for a train ride and a visit to Denali National Park.
The first railroad came to Fairbanks in 1905 with the narrow gauge railroad built by the Tanana Valley Railroad between Fairbanks and Chatanika. The Tanana Valley Railroad went bankrupt in 1917, when the company’s tracks were purchased by the US government, which was expanding Alaska’s railroads. The railroad from Seward in the south came to Fairbanks in 1923, when President Warren G. Harding officially opened the line between the coastal city of Seward and Fairbanks in interior Alaska. This section is still the main line of the Alaska Railroad.
If you don’t have time to travel on the Alaska Railroad, you can visit the station in Fairbanks when the Alaska Railroad runs to or from Anchorage. Then you can see the trains, which operate with the well-known panoramic carriages, which give an extra good view on the route. You can also see a model railroad on display in the Fairbanks station building.
The George C. Thomas Memorial Library is a building in Fairbanks that is worth seeing for several reasons. The house was built in 1909 and is a good example of the American missions in Alaska of that time. It was the Episcopal Church that constructed the building, which the city of Fairbanks purchased from the church in 1942. It was then converted into a publicly owned library, and it served as such until 1977.
The Episcopal Mission founded their mission in Fairbanks in 1904 with the goal of providing books to residents of isolated areas and communities. It developed into lending books to the public and also into the establishment of reading rooms, which increased the need for a new library building.
In 1909, George C. Thomas donated the money for the church’s construction of a new library building, and he also set aside money for maintenance for the first three years. George C. Thomas never came to Alaska and died before the completion of the house, which today is named after him.
The George C. Thomas Memorial Library became historic on 5-6 July 1915, where six chiefs from the Athabasca Indians and others met with representatives from the federal United States. The meeting was pivotal as the start of the Indians’ struggle for rights to the land and for understanding and recognition of their culture.
Rivers such as the Yukon and the Chena River were formerly some of the most important transport routes to interior Alaska with paddle steamers connecting cities and trading posts. In Pioneer Park in Fairbanks you can see the SS Denana, which sailed until 1957, and on a trip with Riverboat Discovery you can sail a beautiful paddle steamer on the Chena River.
The trip is interesting, and this is not least due to the paddle steamer itself, but it is also a trip through the history of the city and the area. Along the way, you get to know some of the things that define interior Alaska, like demonstrations of seaplanes, dog breeding and sled dog racing as well as a visit to the native population.
You sail along the Chena River to its confluence with the Tanana River, and thus it is the closest to the route that was sailed when Fairbanks was established as a city. Along the way you experience the various things mentioned, and you come ashore at a village built in a way that shows the life and traditions of the original population.
There has been a gold rush in many places in Alaska, where gold discoveries have attracted thousands of prospectors. The same was the case in Fairbanks, where the gold rush raged in the early 1900s, and you can learn more about that history up to today’s gold diggers at Gold Dredge 8.
The place where Gold Dredge 8 is located is a historic gold mining area, and a visit brings you back to the gold rush of the 20th century. You drive a small version of the Tanana Valley Railroad into the area, and you come to the large machine that was used to dig for gold right here in the years 1927-1942. The gold digger story is told in an interesting way, and you are also allowed to try your luck at washing gold.
Just outside of Fairbanks, you can see a publicly accessible section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that connects the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay in the north to the shipping facilities in Valdez in the south. The pipeline is an amazing piece of engineering that goes through Alaska’s nature and harsh climate.
At the Alaska Pipeline Viewpoint you can walk up to the pipeline and there is information about it on site. You can also see examples of the so-called pigs used to clean the pipeline by sending them through the pipe between pumping stations along the pipeline’s 1,288 km route.
Chena Hot Springs is a small community and resort in the Chena River State Recreation Area, located northeast of Fairbanks. The place is known for its hot spring, and the story goes back to 1905, when the gold digger brothers Robert and Thomas Swan were looking for a hot spring in the area due to Robert Swan’s rheumatism.
In 1911, twelve small cabins were established around the warm waters of Chena Hot Springs, and with that, visitors started coming here in large numbers. Today, the twelve cabins have become a lovely resort, where you can enjoy the naturally warm water that comes from underground through cracks in the granite under the site’s outdoor bathing lake.
You can also enjoy the northern lights during the season from the resort area, which is quite isolated in nature without the light that you have in cities. At Chena Hot Springs, you can visit the Aurora Ice Museum as well, a world of beautiful ice sculptures and other things created from ice and by leading ice artists. The museum opened in 2005 and has a temperature below freezing all year round and lighting inspired by the northern lights.
32 College Road
bentleymallfairbanks.com
537 Johansen Expy
walmart.com
3401 Airport Way
2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue
Riverboat Discovery
1975 Discovery Drive
riverboatdiscovery.com
Pioneer Park
2300 Airport Way
fnsb.gov
Ice Museum
500 2nd Avenue
icemuseum.com
Fairbanks, Alaska, USA[/caption]
Overview of Fairbanks
Fairbanks is the largest inland city in Alaska, and it is one of the state’s largest cities after Anchorage. The presence of indigenous people in the area goes back a long way, but there was no real settlement here until the American founding of the city in 1901.
Contents: Tours in the city + tours in the surrounding area
Published: Released soon
Author: Stig Albeck
Publisher: Vamados.com
Language: English
About the travel guide
The Fairbanks travel guide gives you an overview of the sights and activities of the American city. Read about top sights and other sights, and get a tour guide with tour suggestions and detailed descriptions of all the city’s most important churches, monuments, mansions, museums, etc.
Fairbanks is waiting for you, and at vamados.com you can also find cheap flights and great deals on hotels for your trip. You just select your travel dates and then you get flight and accommodation suggestions in and around the city.
Read more about Fairbanks and USA
USA Travel Guide: https://vamados.com/usa
City tourism: https://visitfair-banks.com
Main Page: https://www.vamados.com/
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Click the “Add to Cart” button to purchase the travel guide. After that you will come to the payment, where you enter the purchase and payment information. Upon payment of the travel guide, you will immediately receive a receipt with a link to download your purchase. You can download the travel guide immediately or use the download link in the email later.
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When you buy the travel guide to Fairbanks you get the book online so you can have it on your phone, tablet or computer – and of course you can choose to print it. Use the maps and tour suggestions and you will have a good and content-rich journey.
Old City Hall is one of Fairbanks’ former public administration buildings. Built in Art Deco in 1935 in reinforced concrete, the building housed the city’s administrative offices and also the police station and fire station. Over time, the house was expanded in line with the need for more space for the administration. The Old City Hall had its original function until 1994, when the administration was moved to the Main School building.
Today, the Fairbanks Distilling Company is located in the old City Hall building. It is a distillery known for producing award-winning vodka on potatoes. You can visit the distillery and taste the production and look at the old building from which Fairbanks was governed for many years.
The Fairbanks Community Museum is an interesting place to visit if you want to learn more about Fairbanks’ history and many of the events that have developed the city. You can e.g. see exhibits about life in Fairbanks in the winter and films about the area’s sled dogs.
Here is also information about the Klondike gold rush that brought many gold miners to the region. You can learn about the flood that hit Fairbanks in 1967 as well, see a miner’s cabin and much more. The museum is located in the Co-op Plaza building.
Fairbanks City Hall is the present town hall, originally built as the Main School in 1934. And in fact, the city’s primary school had already been here from 1906 to 1932, but it burned down and a new one had to be built. Like several other buildings, the Main School was built in reinforced concrete to increase fire safety, and the school opened as the most modern school in Alaska.
The Main School was expanded several times in line with the town’s development, as the school was the only public school in the town until 1951. The children attended the Main School until 1976, when the building was converted into administration for the city government, and since 1996 the city hall has been the seat of Fairbanks’ city government.
In front of the city hall you can see a sculpture called Il Ponte or The Bridge. It was a gift from Fairbanks’ twin town in Italy, Fanano. Fanano is the town where Felice Pedroni was born in 1858. He went to Alaska in the early 1890s to look for gold. On July 22, 1902, he found gold in Pedro Creek north of Fairbanks, an event that started the gold rush in the Fairbanks area.
The Old Federal Building is a former government building in Fairbanks. It was built in 1933 in art deco with many typical elements in the architecture. It was Washington D.C. architect George N. Ray who designed the building.
The Old Federal Building was constructed to house several government agency offices. From the opening, a federal court, a post office and various federal offices were located here. Since then, the large building has been converted to private offices.
Co-op Plaza is a building that takes its name from the Co-op supermarket, which is no longer located here. The house has a past as The Empress Theatre. The theater was built in 1927 as Fairbanks’ first reinforced concrete building. The construction was the subject of great debate at the time, because many believed that the concrete could not withstand the cold winters of interior Alaska.
The Empress Theater was built with 630 seats, but the opening on 25 August 1927 welcomed 1,300 guests. The theater was in operation until 1961, and since then, together with the neighboring building, built as the Co-op Drug Store in 1934, it has been redeveloped as a center with various shops and eateries.
In Fairbanks, several Art Deco buildings can be seen in the area between Cushman Street and Lacey Street, and the Lacey Street Theater is a good example of this architectural style. The relatively large new buildings changed the streetscape of Fairbanks from the original gold mining town to a modern city.
The Lacey Street Theater was built in 1939 by Austin E. Lathrop, who owned several other theaters. In 1966, the interior of the theater burned, with only the lobby escaping serious damage. However, the theater was reconstructed and was in operation until 1981. During the reconstruction, the beautiful Art Deco exterior was preserved, and today you can visit the Fairbanks Ice Museum in the distinctive building.
Fairbanks is located in interior Alaska which is an area characterized by snow, ice and cold winters. The ice is the focal point at the Fairbanks Ice Museum, where you step into a world of ice in the former Lacey Street Theater.
At the museum you can see beautiful ice sculptures and working ice artists with their tools, who create the frozen art objects that are beautifully illuminated in the museum’s exhibitions. You can also get a closer look at the northern lights with the museum’s Aurora Show. The museum is housed in the historic Lacey Street Theatre, from which you can still see the original lobby.
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was built in 1904 as the first Catholic church in interior Alaska. It was originally located on Dunkel Street, but in the winter of 1911-1912 it was moved to its present location on the north side of the Chena River.
During the first decades, the church was expanded on several occasions. The first extension was in 1914, and in 1926-1928 Immaculate Conception had the current glass mosaics installed. Today, the church stands atmospherically in the streetscape as one of the older buildings in Fairbanks.
Fairbanks Depot is the name of the railway station in Fairbanks. From here you can travel with the famous trains of the Alaska Railroad, which bear the names Denali Star and Aurora Winter Train. Both trains run between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and they are popular with tourists for a train ride and a visit to Denali National Park.
The first railroad came to Fairbanks in 1905 with the narrow gauge railroad built by the Tanana Valley Railroad between Fairbanks and Chatanika. The Tanana Valley Railroad went bankrupt in 1917, when the company’s tracks were purchased by the US government, which was expanding Alaska’s railroads. The railroad from Seward in the south came to Fairbanks in 1923, when President Warren G. Harding officially opened the line between the coastal city of Seward and Fairbanks in interior Alaska. This section is still the main line of the Alaska Railroad.
If you don’t have time to travel on the Alaska Railroad, you can visit the station in Fairbanks when the Alaska Railroad runs to or from Anchorage. Then you can see the trains, which operate with the well-known panoramic carriages, which give an extra good view on the route. You can also see a model railroad on display in the Fairbanks station building.
The George C. Thomas Memorial Library is a building in Fairbanks that is worth seeing for several reasons. The house was built in 1909 and is a good example of the American missions in Alaska of that time. It was the Episcopal Church that constructed the building, which the city of Fairbanks purchased from the church in 1942. It was then converted into a publicly owned library, and it served as such until 1977.
The Episcopal Mission founded their mission in Fairbanks in 1904 with the goal of providing books to residents of isolated areas and communities. It developed into lending books to the public and also into the establishment of reading rooms, which increased the need for a new library building.
In 1909, George C. Thomas donated the money for the church’s construction of a new library building, and he also set aside money for maintenance for the first three years. George C. Thomas never came to Alaska and died before the completion of the house, which today is named after him.
The George C. Thomas Memorial Library became historic on 5-6 July 1915, where six chiefs from the Athabasca Indians and others met with representatives from the federal United States. The meeting was pivotal as the start of the Indians’ struggle for rights to the land and for understanding and recognition of their culture.
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