Category: Central Interior Alaska

‘Eskimo Village’ survives on Lathrop Street in Fairbanks

‘Eskimo Village’ survives on Lathrop Street in Fairbanks

During and right after World War II there was a rapid influx of people into the Fairbanks area as the U.S. military expanded its presence. With the increased demands on the Alaska Railroad during...

Murphy Dome radar site near Fairbanks as it looks today. This is all that is left of a much larger radar installation dating from the 1950s. Pen & ink on watercolor paper, 8" dia.

Peaceful Murphy Dome was once a Cold War radar surveillance site

Murphy Dome, named by prospectors in the early 1900s, is a 2,930-foot-tall mountain 20 miles northwest of Fairbanks. It is the highest point in the area, and with a summit almost 2,500 feet above...

Music Mart in Fairbanks has been a Fairbanks institution for over 50 years. The oldest portion of the building was constructed in 1908.

Music Mart: 60 years in the same Fairbanks location

Karl Reinhold Carlson was born in 1922 in British Columbia. His family moved to the United States in the 1930s, and Karl first came to Alaska in 1940 when his family moved to Kodiak,...

St. Joseph’s Hospital served Fairbanks’ medical needs for more than 50 years

The Catholic Church sent Father Francis Monroe (Society of Jesus) to Alaska in 1894. He spent several years at missions along the Lower Yukon River before moving to the Upper Yukon after the Klondike...

Wilbur Brothers sheet metal shop in Fairbanks on Noble Street in Fairbanks. The biusiness has been at this site since 1954. Pen & ink on watercolor paper, 7" x 10"

Wilbur and sons played a big role in Fairbanks history

Wilbur Brothers Sheet Metal, in one form or another, has been a family-owned Fairbanks business since 1914. During the winter of 1913-14, Alden Wilbur Sr., who was living in Seattle with his wife and...

Skiing at Birch Hill in Fairbanks dates back to 1930s

Skiing at Birch Hill in Fairbanks dates back to the 1930s

With skiing’s long history in Nordic countries, it is not surprising the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns entering Alaska at the turn of the 20th century brought their skiing traditions with them. According to...

How wireless telegraphy helped modernize Circle

How wireless telegraphy helped modernize Circle

The Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS) was an approximately 1,550-mile-long Alaska communications system built between 1900 and 1904. It linked a string of U.S. Army posts: Fort Davis in Nome, Fort St....

Rasmuson Library at University of Alaska - Fairbanks carries on the dream of Charles Bunnell

Rasmuson Library at University of Alaska – Fairbanks carries on the dream of Charles Bunnell

The library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks had an inauspicious beginning. According to Ted Ryberg (the university’s librarian in 1970), while the university’s predecessor, the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, began...

The 1928 Stearman biplane that made Alaska aviation history

The 1928 Stearman biplane that made Alaska aviation history

The plane in the drawing is a 1928 Stearman C3B, registration number NC5415. It is, along with planes such as Ben Eielson’s World War I-era Curtis Wright JN-4 (on display at Fairbanks International Airport),...

1915 Tanana Chiefs Conference was one of the first steps toward Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

1915 Tanana Chiefs Conference was one of the first steps toward Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

On July 5 and 6, 1915, one of the precursors to the 1971 meeting of Alaska Native elders to discuss the pending Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was held in Fairbanks, in the George...