The portion of the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail crossing the Alaska Range at Isabel Pass was one of the most dangerous sections of the trail. The distance between Paxson’s Roadhouse, on the south side of Isabel...
Numerous routes were considered for a railway to the Kennecott copper mines in the Wrangell Mountains. The most direct route was along the Copper River, but engineers hired by the Alaska Syndicate (which controlled...
Oscar Frank Anderson was a Swedish immigrant living in Seattle with his wife and three children in 1915. When he heard about the government railroad that would likely be constructed in Alaska from Cook...
This article is reprinted from the 1-14-2022 edition of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Photo and story by Amanda Bohman A 237-foot wooden steam-powered sternwheeler with five decks that was famous for plying Interior Alaska...
During Fairbanks’ post-World War II population boom, development pressure forced the relocation of the community’s airport, Weeks Field. The airport, less than a mile from downtown, moved eight miles farther away, to its present...
The 1896 Cook Inlet Gold Rush attracted hundreds of gold-seekers to Upper Cook Inlet. A few of those prospectors followed Willow Creek, a tributary of the Susitna River, into the Talkeetna Mountains. According to...
McCallum Creek is a tributary of Phelan Creek, which in turn flows into the Delta River. (Several early guidebooks confused Phelan Creek with the Delta River.) Located about 160 miles southeast of Fairbanks along...
This painting shows Black Rapids Roadhouse, which was one of the most important and longest-operating roadhouses along the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail. The remains of the roadhouse are still visible at Mile 227.5 of the Richardson...
Jay Livengood and Teddy Hudson discovered gold in the headwaters of the Tolovana River in 1914, leading to a minor gold rush in 1915. The resulting camp (eventually named Livengood) was remote, even though...
Sentinel Island, located along Southeast Alaska’s Inside Passage, was the location of one of the first U.S. lighthouses built in Alaska. (Towards the end of the Russian-American Company occupation of Alaska it had a...
