Fairbanks

Sister cities

• Mo i Rana
• Yakutsk
• Yellowknife
• Pune
• Richland
• Monbetsu
• Erdenet
• Tainan
• Fanano

History

Athabascan peoples have lived on, traveled through, and stewarded the land of the Fairbanks area for thousands of years. Fairbanks continues to benefit from the leadership and influence of people from Athabascan and other Alaska Native communities. An archaeological site excavated on the grounds of the University of Alaska Fairbanks uncovered a Native camp about 3,500 years old, with older remains found at deeper levels. From evidence gathered at the site, archaeologists surmise that Native activities in the area included seasonal hunting and fishing. In addition, archaeological sites on the grounds of nearby Fort Wainwright date back well over 10,000 years. 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 Bering Strait land bridge in deep antiquity. Teams of gold prospectors soon congregated in and around the newly founded Fairbanks; they built drift mines, dredges, and lode mines in addition to panning and sluicing. After some urging by James Wickersham, who later moved the seat of the Third Division court from Eagle to Fairbanks, the settlement was named after Charles W. Fairbanks, a Republican senator from Indiana and later the twenty-sixth vice president of the United States, serving under Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. In these early years of settlement, the Tanana Valley was an important agricultural center for Alaska until the establishment of the Matanuska Valley Colonization Project and the town of Palmer in 1935. Agricultural activity still occurs today in the Tanana Valley, but mostly to the southeast of Fairbanks in the communities of Salcha and Delta Junction. During the early days of Fairbanks, its…

Geography

Fairbanks is in the central Tanana Valley, straddling the Chena River near its confluence with the Tanana River. Immediately north of the city is a chain of hills that rises gradually until it reaches the White Mountains and the Yukon River. The city's southern border is the Tanana River. South of the river is the Tanana Flats, an area of marsh and bog that stretches for more than until it rises into the Alaska Range, which is visible from Fairbanks on clear days. To the east and west are low valleys separated by ridges of hills up to above sea level. The Tanana Valley is crossed by many low streams and rivers that flow into the Tanana River. In Fairbanks, the Chena River flows southwest until it empties into the Tanana. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of ; of it is land and of it (2.48%) is water. The city is extremely far north, close to 16 degrees north of the Pacific border between the U.S. and Canada. It is on roughly the same parallel as the northern Swedish city of Skellefteå and Reykjavík, Iceland, just south of the Arctic Circle. Because of this, the white night or "Midnight Sun" phenomenon occurs here around the summer solstice. Due to its warm summers, Fairbanks is south of the arctic tree line. Fairbanks's climate is classified as a humid continental climate bordering on a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfb bordering on Dfc, Trewartha Dclc bordering on Eclc, although some portions of Fairbanks MSA like College firmly classifies as subarctic), with long, severely cold winters and short, warm summers. October through February are the snowiest months, and there is usually additional snow from March to May. On average, the season's first accumulating snowfall and first inch of snow fall on October 1 and 11, respectively;…

Race & ethnicity