Fairbanks, Alaska, United StatesNenana - Fairbanks
Healy – the truck from the movie
Is our first stop to look at a truck,
in the 49th State Brewery they have the old truck from the movie
“into the wild” – guess once we are home we should watch it. And then we drove
through lots and lots of forest.
Nenana – the old railway station
- It a small town of 390 people and started with the 1903 gold discovery, that is when the roadhouse was built
- Here the last golden spike was put into the Alaska railroad
- Nenana is Athabascan and means “a good place to camp between the rivers”
As we drove into town we saw a lot of
log houses (most of them look abandoned) , we went right towards the “railroad
museum”, as Gine said it is for free, we went inside. It is inside the old
train station with a super cool ceiling. The guy in there did a lot of talking,
we could go in the old office where they sold the tickets (half of the museum
is full of staff (not organised), we could go upstairs to check out the 3
bedrooms today a B&B and one time the apartment of the station master.
The most funniest part of this town
is: they built every year a black-and-white-big tripod, they are putting on the
ice in March. And then during the year people can buy a ticket for 3$ on when
they ice will break: because the tripod is with a big rope attached to the clock
and when the ice breaks the clock stops – they have huge big books about every
person buying a ticket. It’s called the “Nenana Ice Classic”.
At the “Visitor info” or let’s say the
Art center with a few booklets we saw the Taky chief – an little old boat from
the river times
Coffee along the road
It’s coffee time and we decided to
stop at one of the “viewpoints” – you know the most we saw were the plants near
the pull out. And as Mandy is always on the leash, we didn’t mind her going
out. Good thing she was on the leash as the black leash ended up in the middle
of the flowers and calling Mandy didn’t bring her back, so Paul slowly went
down hill through flowers nearly Paul height and made his way along the leash
until he found her.
Finally: a Car wash
And then finally we hit Fairbanks and
what was our first stop: a car wash – Paul wanted to get all the mud off the
truck – I think it was our most expensive carwash every: as 1 minute cost 1
dollar and unbelievable we needed 28 minutes!!!! And as per Paul the truck is
still not really clean. Guess we are now ready for the next gravel road part.
Our home at Walmart
Where to stay in Fairbanks: at
Walmart: here we can buy our supper – get wifi (by the way there are even
electric pug ins on the parking lot) – perfect and even better: Paul could here
the train.
The Things we need to do:
The last big city for a while so that
means: an oil change – then we had to fill up brake fluid and power steering
fluid, time for laundry and yes, also time for a phone call with Martin. It is
great to have internet and getting a bit caught up.
And as our propane run out last night
– it was perfect to defrost the freezer as we nearly have no space left for
freezing but lots and lots of ice.
The city in the North or the golden
heart city: Fairbanks
- It is Alaska’s 2nd largest city with a population of 32.000 and the only “city” in the interior and it is called the golden heart city
- It is along the chena river and a hub for Alaska’s interior and the Arctic: from here it goes north to the Arctic – east to Canada and south to the Denali
- The city was founded in 1901 when Barnette went up the Tanana River, he got stranded here and a year later an Italian struck gold here and the people started t come By 1908 already 18.000 people lived here. Barnette convinced 25 other miners in 1902 to call it Fairbanks: he expected that one day there will be a town and he was involved to get the first post office – he also became the 1st mayor of Fairbanks in 1903
- In 1955 here 55 delegates from around Alaska met, so that Alaska could become a state – their effort got rewarded in 1959 when President Eisenhower signed a proclamation and named Alaska the 49th state
- Another big boom for the town was, whenthe Pipeline was built from 1973-77 from Prudhoe Bay along with the Dalton Highway
- And again Gold was found and in 2010 the Knox Gold mine was Alaska’s largest gold mine with over 400 people employed
Pioneer Park
- It all started with an idea in 1955: it got made to celebrate Fairbanks history*
What to do next: today it is humid and
warm – and as we both love the heat we are not used to it anymore. Gine said
let’s check out the Pioneer park. This is a cute little Theme park – the best
thing it is free and once we came in, we got a map from the park and then start
exploring:
Harding carriage: this old
train carriage – was made for President Harding in 1923 when he came to put in
the golden Spike on the Alaska railroad. We could go inside and walk on the red
carpet and admire the beautiful wood work and learn more about the last spike
- by the way he was also the first president to visit Alaska, he called it the voyage of understanding: he made a grand trip around the US – unfortunately he died in Aug 1923 in San Fransisco before he could complete his tour
- golden spikes are normally the part of a private railway company celebration. The Spike was the private property of Mears (the chief engineer) and it was returned to him after the ceremony and is still today in the Mears family
From here we had some cool views on
the Steamwheeler Nenana which sits right in the middle of the park:
super cool to look at. There was also the little wheel house (by the way it is
the original) from another steamwheeler here, to go inside and to turn the
wheel
- Known as the last lady of the river, she was built in Nenana in 1932, had 24 state rooms and space for 32 crew and 300 tons of cargo. She was operating on the Tenana and Yukon river from 1933-1954 and is the 2nd largest hull ship still in existence.
- She is also one of the last ships built when the craftsmen used their knowledge: it was the practical shipbuilding and it was done until the 1920s. It is thought that she is one of the first ships built in the Yukon with a blue-print – the more scientific construction process. This is the earliest surviving blue-print
- The Lavelle Young was the steam wheeler who transported Barnette and his wife up here, because of the low waterlevel he couldn’t continue to Tarnacross and got stranded here and the Lavelle made it up 15 Miles on the Chena river: they were unloaded and left here
Walking through the little “gold
rush town” is cute, there are 35 old log cabins, each one has a little
sign, where it came from and who owned it – Gine liked the one the best which
said “there is not much known about this cabin, except that it got brought here
from its original location”, one was a cabin “from the redlight district: by
the way in the old days a fence went around this cabin to protect the innocent
from views of debauchery” – each of the cabins had a little shop or eatery
inside.
The steam train: we could hear and
smell it several times as from the “train station” you can go around the park,
we could go in the train station, where Gine looked and Paul got talked too.
We decided to skip the Pioneer Air
museum: we thought it is a bit pricy on how small it is and rather were sitting
down and eating some icecream watching people and listening to the train.
The Morris Thompson visitor center
Ok, so this super fancy visitor info
is more of a museum then an info center. We walked through “the seasons” of the
interior of Alaska we learn more about this part of the world and about the
first nations. they say it is the best visitor info in Alaska, I think it is
more a museum than an info center.
- You know it is the end of winter: when the mosquitos come out of hiding and the trucks during the road construction break through the ice of the Chena River
- The oil discovery changed Alaska, it gave it jobs, settled native land settlements, conserved million of acres for everyone to enjoy and gives the Alaskan a yearly annual payment
- We learned about the dancing lights of winter and saw the old dog sled in the snow, we looked into a tent and saw a bear in the fall foliage
- We learned that 9000 years ago before the last ice age, the earth temperature was warmer than it is today – at that time the permafrost melted, then it started cooling and it is warming again
- Summer is a brief and busy season here – and yes we found this out (and also not that warm)
Relaxing at the Golden Heart Plaza
Next stop on our list: this is a cute
little paved plaza with a super nice fountain with inuits they call it “unknown
first family” and if you have time, here are lots and lots of metal plagues
where you can read about Fairbanks and the names and businesses of the first
people living here.
What we liked is the clocktower, not
that it looks that spectacular, but every 10 min or so, it was playing a song –
super cute. We stayed here and enjoyed the sun and relaxed until it was time to
head for supper
- Did you know in 1967 the Chena river put the whole city under water. An usual August brought lots and lots of rain, in 8 days it rained 6.5 inches – the water start to rise. Over 12.000 people got evacuated, some areas were up to 5 ft under water: and they do have the highwater mark right in the park (I still had to point up to it)
Better late then never: at Soba
A few days ago was our wedding
anniversary – but we didn’t wanted to go out for a dinner in the super touristy
Denali artificial tourist summer town. And so we picked this unique restaurant
as it is Eastern Europea with Moldovan cuisine – sounds cool right. It was in a
“mall” except the stores in the Mall were all empty, but they did had some old
organs standing around. Yummy supper and afterwards we were heading back to the
Golden Heart Plaza: to listen to some music – It was a bit weird as they were
playing music when the clock was playing another song and the two songs didn’t
totally went together. What a weird little town.
2025-05-22