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Aurora borealis as seen near Fairbanks, Alaska (Ron Crabtree/Photographer's Choice/Getty)
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Fairbanks Travel Guide
If the story of the founding of Fairbanks had happened anywhere else, it wouldn't be told so proudly, for the city's father was a swindler and its undignified birth contained an element of chance not usually admitted in polite society. As the popular story goes (and the historians' version is fairly close), it seems that in 1901, E. T. Barnette decided to get rich by starting a gold-mining boomtown like the others that had sprouted from Dawson City to Nome as the stampeders of 1898 sloshed back and forth across the territory from one gold find to the next. He booked passage on a riverboat going up the Tanana with his supplies to build the town, having made an understanding with the captain that, should the vessel get stuck, he would lighten the load by getting off with the materials on the nearest bank. Unfortunately, the captain got lost. Thinking he was heading up a slough on the Tanana, he got sidetracked into the relatively small Chena River. That was where the boat got stuck and where Barnette got left, and that was where he founded Fairbanks.
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Quality Inn Fairbanks
1521 S. Cushman Street
Fairbanks, AK 99701 Map Distance: 0.2 mi. (from destination center) Hotel Class: 
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AttractionsLarge Animal Research Station
Yankovich Rd
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775 Distance: 0.0 mi. (from destination center) Description: The university studies captive musk ox, reindeer, and caribou here on a property often called... Read More The El Dorado Gold Mine
Off the Elliott Hwy., 9 miles north of town
1.3 Mile Elliott Hwy Fairbanks, Alaska 99709 Distance: 0.0 mi. (from destination center) Description: A train such as you would find at an amusement park carries visitors... Read More UA Museum of the North
907 Yukon Dr
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-6960 Distance: 3.8 mi. (from destination center) Description: This rich, interdisciplinary on-campus museum, long one of Alaska's best, recently added a... Read More AirportsMajor Airports near Fairbanks
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