Up next in 10
Let's explore downtown Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks is the state's largest inland city with a population of about 32K people and 92k in the "metro" area. The downtown is small and the city is kind of sprawly. That said, it has an interesting history starting in the earliest 1900's with gold miners and trappers flooding into the area. Captain Barnette settled in the area in 1901 when the boat he was on refused to go any further.
The city sits on the Chena river just above where it meets the Tanana River.
The city is now a tourist destination as well as serving as a gateway to Prudhoe bay to the north and the terminus of the Alaska Railway coming up from the south. I hope you enjoy the virtual city tour. Keep on steppin' -H
Be sure to check out our other Alaska walking tours on searchable website https://citywalksvirtualtours.com.
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:03
hello Walkers and welcome back to City walks it's been a while since I've recorded not since uh maybe
0:10
July I've been cycling through the French videos no pun
0:15
intended but it's a good one uh my name is Henry well actually I'm going to flip
0:21
you around here 1 two three my name is Henry I will be your proxy Walker today
0:26
your virtual travel guide your co- discover and I'm going to flip you around
0:32
again 1 two 3 there we go um and today
0:38
we are in well you would think we're in the middle of October or no November but
0:43
it's actually early September it's about noon and uh 51° fahr 10° C we are in
0:51
Fairbanks Alaska today and it is interesting place beautiful beautiful
1:00
State absolutely Fairbanks is smaller than I would have thought we're going to walk around downtown and I'm going to
1:07
share a little bit of information that I've learned with with you
1:13
and uh then we're going to cross the chaina river and end up at hopefully at
1:18
the Morrison Visitor Center Morris Visitor Center this is a pretty
1:24
cool um mural that I wanted to show you and it's uh it's a Denali mural Denali
1:30
is south of here between here and Anchorage kind of and it's kind of a big dramatic
1:36
swooping mural there's a couple other murals around maybe we'll see them
1:42
uh yeah so this channel welcome to City watch this is the channel where I walk
1:47
you around and we discover things I often do not know I'm not a an an expert
1:56
in any of these places typically uh with a few exceptions and this is not an
2:01
exception um and I point out things that are interesting like this metal work
2:07
here with uh dog slers kind of a neat design for the downtown
2:13
area uh and I ramble on so if you are looking for a silent walking video which
2:21
I totally respect uh probably jeez
2:31
probably not the ideal channel for you uh but there's a ton of other ones out there in any case um we're just going to
2:40
wander on here as we get down to Third Avenue I'm going to get away from this main road for a second we're going to
2:46
head on third we were just on kushman uh oh that's much better the
2:52
downtown area of Fairbanks is not large but in fact the town only only has
3:00
about 30,000 or so people in it uh residents and 990,000 in the what is it
3:09
it's the uh Fairbanks Northstar burrow which is massively in terms of
3:16
area uh so I we think it's about the size of Boseman little smaller than
3:23
bosan Montana which is right near where we live uh can see interesting flowers over
3:32
there at the Bon Tha restaurant uh a lot of stuff is got that
3:37
Northern weathered look to it what I imagine it as um this is oh this is soba
3:46
and there's a hostel down here there's a place called The creery which has some uh sweets and that sort of thing you can
3:54
see there not a lot of tall buildings here I'm not sure the reasoning behind that there is a couple of hotels around
4:01
uh we'll pass one and then some sporting good stores and we'll see a couple we'll look in the window of a few gift shops
4:07
as well um all right what else I was going to
4:13
say oh last night we saw the Aurora and earlier in the week we went to the
4:19
Morrison Center and saw a a talk on the Aurora from a local astrophysicist or
4:27
geomagnetic physicist uh which which was fascinating and he said
4:33
that one way or another Fairbanks has the Aurora every night you can't always
4:38
see it because it's cloudy or it's light in the summer uh
4:47
and here's Big Rays Alaskan Outfitters I think it's kind of a local chain uh oh
4:54
Fairbanks Anchorage and Kodiak so um anyway we got to see a little bit
4:59
last night it wasn't magnificent as I've seen it before but it was kind of cool and exciting to see and it's a it's a
5:08
major draw for tourism here and it's most active in the fall and
5:15
spring and probably more visible in the winter cuz it's dark and tends to be
5:21
clear because of the temperature uh this is a big old parking garage here this I think is the Polaris
5:27
building up ahead and it was for a long time the tallest building in Anchor in Fairbanks sorry and they seem to be
5:35
tearing it down now I think that's the Polaris building uh and this dates back to the I
5:42
think the '
5:49
50s here's Lacy Street Theater and it's currently now the uh Fairbanks Ice
5:56
Museum we have not been in there we're going to go down here a little way as an
6:02
explore kind of a lot of' 60s designed elements that are around
6:12
still my son who loves maps and Urban Design is comment
6:17
on how many parking lots there are down here so I mentioned the Aurora Borealis
6:23
which is we're under something called The auroral Oval here and that's kind of this dut shaped or oval shaped deal you
6:32
can see the Fall colors out there um that is over the
6:39
poles and so that's why they have Aurora every single day uh is not always spectacular but
6:48
they have some sort of activity this is Noble Street
6:55
here we're actually going to circle around and backtrack I think
7:01
kind of a neat graffiti thing over there um cuz I want to go show
7:08
you a couple other things that I have some I want to thank our patreon
7:14
supporters today and our Kofi supporters and our one-time PayPal
7:19
supporters your donations your contributions really make this channel a
7:25
little bit easier a little bit more bearable you know pays for some of our travels buys us some coffees Etc thank you very
7:33
much for generosity you can find out more about that in the description
7:39
below the patreon is about five bucks a month very lightweight if you're
7:45
interested uh also leave me a comment I love getting your guys' comments about our walks Corrections additional info um
7:55
other places to walk uh places you'd like to see request kind of thing those are I I really like
8:03
getting those and interacting with you guys with that
8:13
[Music] stuff uh across the way is I think
8:19
somebody's election office and it says fish family
8:24
Freedom sounds uh like a very Alaskan
8:30
type of campaign slogan that's what I'm looking for this is the Spring Hill Suites right
8:37
here downtown if you want to stay downtown I will say
8:43
that hotel prices here at least for right now are very high a lot of prices
8:50
are high but not as high as we would have thought for food and drink and that sort of thing it's not as excessively
8:57
expensive as we is I'm sure it is in certain places up north and more remote areas but um
9:05
anyway it's kind of interesting ZL Dorado the Gold
9:10
Rush we'll go look in some windows here a lot of native art and jewelry and
9:19
design um some beautiful beautiful artwork and jewelry
9:27
here and there's a lot of uh uh Native artwork and design as
9:36
well also for the comment section if you guys have any questions please let us know let me know in there and check out
9:44
the city walks virtual tours website.com there and here's a bunch of native
9:50
handmade Alaskan native artwork and crafts kind of exciting to see it's
9:57
really beautiful stuff
10:12
yeah oh I was going to tell you about Fairbanks a lot of fur type themed stuff
10:18
here and in Anchorage we saw a lot of that Fairbanks 30,000 people 9,000 in
10:24
the area founded in 1903 2 years after
10:29
this guy Bernett uh got off a steamboat basically because they
10:36
couldn't go any further north he was trying to go somewhere else uh up the chaina river and they got
10:43
stuck on a sandbar and they kind of kick him off the boat but some local
10:48
Prospectors as we are back here on kushman uh convinced him
10:56
to uh that it would be a good place for a Trading Post and so sure enough he started
11:04
Trading Post and 2 years later uh they incorporated as a town and then there was a Fairbanks Gold
11:14
Rush uh around that time and sort of prospered for a while until
11:19
about for a little while and then went back down until about World War I and then it became a geopolitically
11:27
strategic area and they started bringing in military uh in the late 30s and of course in World
11:35
War II and then during the Cold War of course it's right over the pole from and
11:41
across the ocean from across the sea from Russia the Bridgewater Hotel up
11:47
there uh and they started building a lot of
11:52
military bases and can't remember the name of the military base here
12:02
[Music]
12:08
anyway and then of course they found oil up on prudo Bay and they need to get
12:17
it out of there so they built the pipeline in the' 60s 68 I think around
12:22
that time and here's Bobby's downtown Greek
12:28
restaurant um and so that boosted the economy
12:35
significantly and it's still a trans transition point for that area
12:43
in fact a little bit north of here you get on the Dalton highway to go up there uh and I think we're 200 miles or
12:50
200 miles from the Arctic Circle up here in fact it's something about the north but it is
12:56
the coldest city in North America or in the US above 10,000
13:04
people we're going to go over here and get into a little bit of a residential area before coming back along the river
13:11
and going through a couple Parks Sally looks like a bar and beastro
13:26
maybe what else can I tell you about Fairbanks you the athabascan people uh
13:32
called this area this region home and there was no they haven't found
13:37
any evidence of a permanent settlement but several campsites and other evidence
13:45
of uh people being in this area Fairbanks I think started at
13:53
University in 19 I want to say 17 1917 uh University of Alaska
14:00
Fairbanks and it's got a there's a Thai restaurant um it's got
14:08
a museum of the north that we're hoping to go to later in the week looks like
14:13
it's got a really lot of really interesting uh
14:19
cultural stuff there as well as some uh geophysical and natural history
14:27
type stuff beautiful building up there we did go up to a Botanical Garden up
14:35
there Fairbanks is pretty well spread out as a city it's got It's pretty
14:43
sprawly and I think I'm commented earlier it's kind of got a there's these cities in these towns in the north and
14:50
they're just the weather and the environment up here is just pretty brutal and the buildings tend to show
14:57
that and of course it's expensive expensive to live up here and expensive to maintain these buildings so you know
15:05
they're not going to paint every couple years I love there's a a logous over
15:11
there at the end of the parking lot there's a log house here these aren't like modern kit home
15:18
logous these are look original like they've been here a while and a couple log houses over
15:26
here you can see they're G to insulate that roof and build by building
15:32
a second roof on top coming up on cow Street
15:38
here and we're just going to do a kind of a one block Loop oh there's
15:43
another cool old log cabin
15:54
house the we went down yesterday to the elas
15:59
range route two past Delta Junction along the Tanana
16:07
River and did a couple hikes uh to see glaciers we got to see to the toe of one
16:13
Glacier eventually found it um it was amazing but
16:18
man the mountains and
16:25
the topography are absolutely no joke
16:30
man they are serious mountains just striking and gorgeous but add to that the Fall colors
16:38
all the sort of birch and other sort of deciduous type trees and bushes are just
16:46
orange and red mixed in with the black Spruce dark greens and mosses and stone
16:55
it was just the colors were absolutely fantastic um I'll post
17:01
some well you can look on traveling Mel mt's Instagram account my wife she's
17:08
been posting a lot of stuff from there if you want to see those
17:16
photos anyway it was awesome but around Fairbanks there are some sort of small
17:23
what they call domes and hills and mountains but nothing as dramatic as
17:28
that is down south we're kind of in the I I'm going
17:35
to get corrected on this is if I'm wrong I should be uh but it's kind of rbrs is
17:40
kind of in the center of the state not quite it's a little off but
17:46
uh it's definitely on the
17:52
interior you can see just all the Deciduous colors in here and it is it's
17:59
what is it's early September early midep and uh so it's still early it was
18:07
we left Livingston and it was that day I think it got up to 88 and it's been in
18:12
the 80s with fire forest fire warnings as we are on Kellum Street k l
18:20
l u m uh so it's the seasonality is a huge
18:28
shift quite frankly I kind of like it I'm ready for fall
18:34
but man it is just so the colors here are so beautiful you know everybody talks about the Northeast and New
18:42
England colors which are stunning but man Alaska has got it going
18:53
on uh we're on Second Avenue here I'm just going to cut over here see
18:59
this looks like a park and
19:05
maybe something of significance
19:13
here looks that's in pretty good
19:22
shape oh it's a church over here looks like an Episcopal Church
19:46
we'll just go down here a half block cross over and there's a looks like a
19:51
river access point over to the right we'll take a look at the river before heading back Upstream of the
20:00
river so the I'll talk about this in a minute but kind of a neat
20:07
old log building and they've got some Frontier
20:13
version of a flying butress out here helping hold up the walls isn't
20:19
that
20:25
beautiful 1929 it was built circle around a little bit more see the
20:32
other
20:41
side that's a pretty large log structure all right we're going to cross
20:48
over
20:54
here so the China CH h e na flows in the Tanana
21:04
River which is quite large uh and Brady and spread out you
21:11
can see this is there had been a lot of rain but it's pretty ripping along here
21:17
look at the leaves flowing by I I have to wonder if it's just
21:23
because it's confined to Within these Banks and can't Meander like it
21:31
might normally I'm not a stream ecologist or have a buddy who
21:40
is I forget the name the science city does anyway
21:45
uh they did have a massive flood here in the 50s I think 57
21:51
maybe and the whole downtown area was under a
21:56
couple feet of water and things were swept away and it was in August so about
22:03
a month seasonally before now
22:09
and they had to be pretty quick about cleaning
22:15
everything up and getting back on track before the winter set
22:22
in there's some iron work with salmon
22:29
here look at they do a really nice job of keeping the
22:34
parks beautified with flowers and trees and that sort of
22:48
thing we are on First Avenue right now you're going to see another mural up
22:55
here in a couple minutes and here's this other log building looks
23:02
like it's been fenced off and it's no longer in use but it's a really neat
23:08
building if you've watched this channel hold on I get distract if you watch this channel you know I get distracted here's
23:14
some more iron work showing mountains that's kind of neat some variation
23:20
anyway if you have watched this channel for a while you know that I do like a good porch and that porch is awwesome
23:27
it's got plenty of room probably 8 to 10 ft
23:33
covered benches it's usable space love it
23:39
and kind of want to daydream
23:45
about making that uh into something restoring
23:53
it we're going to go down here and see those FL fls in a minute you can
23:59
see kind of a view of downtown some more iron work with
24:04
cranes take a
24:13
picture [Music] um it is 2024 in this election season
24:20
we've seen a lot of local and Regional politician signs not a lot of
24:30
national politician signs which is kind of kind of a nice
24:51
reprieve oh I was going to mention one of the significances of Fairbanks is I
24:57
think it's the the northernmost uh destination of the
25:03
Alaskan Railway and you can take a train from here down to tala and on to
25:10
Anchorage and from there out to Seward if you'd like and I would like someday to do that we were going to do it this
25:17
trip but the dates just didn't quite work out
25:26
unfortunately one of the the downsides of traveling in the fall
25:33
is sometimes the schedules are not as open there some
25:39
Riverboat design
25:51
[Music]
26:15
is a Mexican restaurant I believe it was called Mexican dber dibert seems to be I
26:23
think I'm saying that right could be debert uh seems to have a lot of signs out
26:53
we'll go this way actually we'll cross over a little bit
27:04
you see the Denali State Bank off to the right here behind this church there's a Denali state bank and
27:10
then there's a McKinley bank and McKinley was the original European name
27:17
for Denali and they've since
27:26
reverted smold residual buildings over
27:34
there there's quite a few bike paths here and surprising amount of solar
27:39
panels uh I'm not seeing any right now but around town you will see quite a few
27:45
buildings with solar panels given surprising given how far north we are I
27:51
guess in the summer you get a good bit of sun but you don't get much in winter
27:58
I there
28:34
neat heart uh installation
28:48
there we're on uh oh we're on baret which I meant to mention Barnett
28:54
Street that uh was named after of course the Barnett
29:00
that founded or founded the Oh The Trading Post and was the
29:06
first mayor to their credit I'm just going to cross here
29:12
hopefully I want to show you something one a couple cool
29:19
bars but also this is the North End of the main line of the Alaska railroad I
29:24
don't know that they actually uh will bring trains up this
29:30
far I don't think they do uh this is the newspaper on the right
29:35
here uh oh Marlo's Bakery I would try that
29:42
out [Music] Dum uh I just want to kind of explore
29:49
down here cuz there's a couple neat old buildings that Bakery building
29:55
this Johnson River Enterprise is we're at driveway Street and Pioneer
30:01
Road here this is part of the exploration part of this
30:09
Channel It's kind I don't know it's kind of a neat old deal
30:16
Alaska Central contractors there's also a lot of gold mining in this area still
30:23
not big industrial mines so much as independent operators that get featured
30:29
in places oh something smells good uh places
30:35
like uh or channels like that Geo and stuff where they have their own equipment and
30:42
they're pulling gold out and it's sort of small scale industrial this looks like a daycare facility so I'm not going
30:48
to go over there I'm going to cut through here and go back to
30:53
the main Drive
31:02
and we'll cross back over the river and then we'll walk along the river to The Visitor
31:16
Center few years ago a viewer commented
31:22
oh that they were curious about how things smelled here or in any place and
31:28
I thought that was such a great question and so I've been trying to include that
31:33
off and on that information right now it smells like baked goods and it's making me very hungry but it's also got that
31:41
deciduous fall wet Leaf smell uh combined with
31:47
some um you know Pine Forest guess Spruce Forest
31:53
smells it's really a nice fr
31:58
to me
32:20
[Music]
32:28
cross
32:42
anyway I have to wait for the light here I'm going to go for it
32:58
this is Illinois
33:03
[Music] Street still a lot of uh flowers
33:17
[Music]
33:28
this an old Catholic Church I believe have to find a sign to determine
33:33
which one but it's got some age to it it's been around for a while I think
33:43
[Music]
34:04
Immaculate Conception
34:11
Church from 19 14 maybe
34:18
1911 was moved over here let's cross back over the
34:24
China and we'll go to a public park it's kind of a Memorial Park and then
34:30
we'll see about getting down along the river
34:43
[Music] path we're going to Golden Heart
34:50
Plaza it's called I think one of the nicknames for Fairbanks is the Golden Heart City I don't know where that comes
34:55
from and yet so it
35:03
is Morris I called it the Morrison Visitor Center it's the Morris Thompson Visitor
35:24
Center can see one of the domes in the distance there that's a bike and foot bridge in the
35:40
[Music]
35:55
foreground kushman in first
36:07
here's the Spring Hill Suites we got a little welcome
36:16
here uh Anchorage is 360 Mi Arctic Circle is 200 Mi Barrow is 500 Miles
36:23
Delta Junction 98 and Denali Park 120
36:33
this is a old building seems to be dedicated to the Yukon Quest sled dog
36:40
race which is 1,000 miles Fairbanks to White Horse uh Canada I'm not going to go in
36:49
looks like a store looks kind of interesting probably a gift shop
37:02
it's an old building the New Horizons Gallery TV uh
37:09
Studio Etc and at the also the fudge pot which
37:14
is a dessert type place the clock tower over there is
37:21
playing some Chimes I'm not going to read out all these um plaque in the Golden
37:28
Heart Plaza um but this is the statue is
37:34
called laska's first family and it's native people with their dogs it looks
37:40
like and a ton of informational plaques and Memorial plaques that you can read
37:46
if you are inclined and we were inclined and learned a lot about the area which
37:51
is kind of neat uh another way to learn about the area and the culture here is to go to
37:58
the Morris Thompson Memorial Visitor Center or Morris
38:03
Thompson Visitor Center uh you can also learn about po lands
38:10
there and that's where we're going now but this big glass structure off to the right is the Rabinowitz
38:17
courthouse and court system building
38:43
come
39:25
we're getting into the a little bit of a nature smell here with the leaves and trees and it's quite
39:34
nice I'm also often surprised how
39:40
quickly you can get away from the hustle and bustle of urban sounds
39:48
and uh traffic and all that stuff and it doesn't take much time to do that or
39:54
distance really especially if you have some trees and natural space Green Space
40:00
uh I forgot that I was going to show you this so bonus so this is the Lend Lease Memorial
40:07
and of course many people have heard about the Lend Lease agreements with the
40:13
UK in World War II but this um we also had a program with Russia because they
40:23
of course were uh fighting the Nazis and
40:29
basically using their vast geography and numbers
40:37
and uh weather and extreme weather to absolutely crush them with huge
40:44
expense but a lot of the materials that made that possible came from the United States and our
40:51
factories and they would fly I believe planes up here and then Siberian Partners Pilots would fly them over to
40:58
Russia uh for the war
41:07
effort I'm going to cross over here to get back onto the path along the
41:20
river getting a little sunshine it's nice
41:37
the other reason is cuz there's a little Archway that I want to pass through when we get to the visitor
41:43
center and I want to show you couple well one house that has a
41:49
bunch of solar panels which granted is not a huge data set to bolster my
41:57
argument about how many I've seen but I've seen a surprising number which is more than
42:13
zero can see uh a house over there it's kind of looks like a little flower pedal or
42:19
something but they've got them at a very steep angle facing south which is where your
42:27
is going to be most of the year and uh a bunch of
42:37
them we recently put a couple years ago put solar panels I guess last year last year yeah last year put them on and we
42:44
were able to do so because of the inflation reduction act gave us a 30% tax credit and made made it affordable
42:52
for us and it's a joy to watch to it's a
42:57
joy to be self-sufficient in our power in fact we produce a surplus which feeds
43:03
back into the grid and with net metering we end up paying
43:08
zero electricity bills we just have a connection fee and we provide clean
43:14
energy out to other people which is nice so this is the archway and people are taking photos
43:22
over here cute photos oh it's a wedding C
43:28
couple but they're Mo s l I'm just going to walk through here real
43:33
quick get out of their picture go through real
43:40
quickly super
43:49
cute so this is the Morris Thompson cultural and Visitor
43:55
Center and it's a it's where we saw that talk about the Aurora and they have
44:00
started doing summer talks here once a month once or twice a month uh so we just lucked into it so we
44:09
learned a lot about the Aurora that I didn't know and what to expect and how to view
44:16
it places to view it so we will take a look here
44:41
I want to show you these uh statues of baby crows that I
44:47
just love and this little Cops of uh birch trees but look at this isn't
44:54
this aren't those funny those are
45:01
great let's just walk in here real
45:10
quick 8 to 5 in the off season 8 to six in the summer
45:35
they've got this great museum entrance we'll just do a quick walk through since we have time
45:44
[Music]
46:08
and they've got a lot of information about uh the cultural bits of Alaska the
46:16
pipeline construction uh military and life in the
46:23
interior a little bit of artwork and activities a couple uh what it's
46:31
like to live here in the interior uh about arts and the
46:38
winter and I know I'm just blazing through here but I don't want to make
46:44
this the focus of
46:52
everything the creamery Dairy is where we went out last night to look at the
46:58
um Northern Lights this is Morris
47:05
Thompson is it
47:10
it and I believe he was a governor excuse me sorry
47:28
[Music] another reason I don't want to spend too
47:34
much time in here is because I want to make sure you guys want to come see it yourself because it's an awesome place
47:41
and you can learn a lot we're going
47:46
to go back outside real
47:52
quick see a image of the [Music] Aurora Little Theater
48:06
there gift
48:15
shop thank you you're welcomee
48:30
all right well I want to thank you guys for joining us on this Fairbanks Alaska
48:37
walking tour virtual Virtual City Tour uh and I hope you enjoyed it I hope you come back and join us for more tours I'm
48:44
not sure where the next walk will be uh but it'll be next week so hope to see
48:51
you then take care and keep on stepping for
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