File:Street scene, Fairbanks, Alaska, circa 1921 (AL+CA 99).jpg

Caption on image: Street scene at Fairbanks, Alaska

Fairbanks was founded in 1901, when an adventurer, ET Barnette was heading up the Tanana River on the SS Lavelle Young with 130 tons of supplies for the Tanacross goldfields. When the river became too shallow to travel, he convinced the riverboat captain to try the Chena. When that river was also too shallow, the captain set Barnette, his wife and his supplies ashore at what is now the corner of 1st Ave and Cushman St. Barnette could have been just another failed trading post merchant in the Great White North, but the following year an Italian prospector named Felix Pedro struck gold 12 miles north of Barnette's trading post. A large boomtown sprang to life amid the hordes of miners stampeding into the area, and by 1908, more than 18,000 people were residing in the Fairbanks Mining District. Due to the permafrost, retrieving the gold proved far more challenging here than elsewhere in Alaska. Gold pans and sluice boxes were of little use here, because the ground had to be thawed before the mineral-rich gravel could be recovered. Early miners cut trees to thaw the ground with fires, but timber was scarce this far north. Eventually, other gold rushes drained the city of its population, as miners went where gold was easier to find. By 1920, Fairbanks had a population of a little more than 1000. Ironically, the city's gold mining industry outlasted any other in the state. After the Alaska Railroad reached Fairbanks in 1923, major mining companies, with money to invest in materials and machines, arrived and brought with them three-story mechanized dredges. The key to reaching the gold was a new process that utilized needle-nose pipes to thaw the ground. Hundreds of pipes were driven into the ground by hand, and water was forced through the pipes into the frozen ground. Once the ground was thawed, the dredges worked non-stop, extracting the gold and making mincemeat of the terrain. More than $200 million in gold has been extracted from the mining district, where dredges still operate today. The most famous dredge, Gold Dredge No 8, operated from 1928 to 1959 and recovered 7.5 million ounces of gold. Eventually it was listed as a national historical site and today is probably the most viewed dredge in the state. When mining activity declined, Fairbanks' growth slowed to a crawl. WWII and the construction of the Alcan and military bases produced the next booms in the city's economy, but neither boom affected Fairbanks like the creation of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, after oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay in 1968. From 1973 to 1977, when construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was at its height, the town, as the principal gateway to the North Slope, burst at its seams. The aftermath of the pipeline construction was just as extreme. The city's population shrank and unemployment crept towards 25% through much of 1979. The oil industry bottomed out in 1986 with the declining price of crude, and Fairbanks, like Anchorage, suffered through more hard times. By the late 1990s, however, the city was on the rebound thanks to tourists and gold. Just north of the city is the Fort Knox Gold Mine, the largest in Alaska. In 1998, Fort Knox produced 365,000oz of gold (worth $170 million), employed 260 workers and contributed more than $4 million in taxes to the city. Despite the price of gold tumbling to below $300 an ounce, the mine is still acquiring prospects in the region in an attempt to expand its operation. Whether gold is a lasting economic benefit for Fairbanks or just another boom-and-bust industry remains to be seen.[Source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/north_america/fairbanks/history.htm

• Subjects (LCTGM): Streets--Alaska--Fairbanks; Wooden buildings--Alaska--Fairbanks
• Subjects (LCSH): Fairbanks (Alaska)--Buildings, structures, etc.