The Fairbanks Gold Rush was a

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

that took place in

Fairbanks, Alaska Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the po ...

in the early 1900s. Fairbanks was a city largely built on gold rush fervor at the turn of the 20th century. Discovery and exploration continue to thrive in and around modern-day Fairbanks.

History

Felix Pedro Felice Pedroni (April 16, 1858 – July 22, 1910), known best to Americans by his Hispanicized alias Felix Pedro, was an Italian immigrant whose discovery of gold in Interior Alaska marked the beginning of the 1902 Fairbanks Gold Rush. Early life ...

spent years searching for gold. He tried to find gold in the creeks and

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

s of the

Tanana Valley The Tanana Valley is a lowland region in central Alaska in the United States, on the north side of the Alaska Range, where the Tanana River emerges from the mountains. Traditional inhabitants of the valley are Tanana Athabaskans of Alaskan Athab ...

where Fairbanks would begin before he found the "American Klondike". A trader named E.T. Barnette and his wife, Isabelle, were aboard the riverboat ''Lavelle Young'' in August 1901, trying to establish a trading post at Tanacross on the

Tanana River The Tanana River (Lower Tanana: Tth'eetoo', Upper Tanana: ''Tth’iitu’ Niign'') is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon (Athabaskan) ...

. Low water conditions stopped the journey before Barnette could reach his destination. Co-owner of the Lavelle Young, Captain Charles Adams, turned into the Chena River, a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of the Tanana, instead. Shallow water stopped the Lavelle Young, and Adams refused to go further, so the Barnettes set up shop there. Barnette opened a trading post on the Chena River after Pedro had told him he had made some good "prospects." On July 22, 1902, Pedro discovered gold north of Fairbanks in

Interior Alaska Interior Alaska is the central region of Alaska's territory, roughly bounded by the Alaska Range to the south and the Brooks Range to the north. It is largely wilderness. Mountains include Denali in the Alaska Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and ...

which triggered the beginning of the Fairbanks Gold Rush, which set off a stampede that transformed the town. Barnette dispatched

Jujiro Wada Jujiro Wada (Japanese: Wada Jujiro) (ca. 1872-5 March 1937) was a Japanese adventurer and entrepreneur who achieved fame for his exploits in turn-of-the-20th-century Alaska and Yukon Territory. Early life According to his own account, Wada was bo ...

, a

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese immigrant from

Ehime is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Ehime Prefecture has a population of 1,342,011 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 5,676 km2 (2,191 sq mi). Ehime Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the northeast, Tokush ...

Shikoku Island is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

, to

Dawson City Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yuko ...

to spread the word that gold had been found in order for Barnette to create a market for his goods. After Wada spread the word about the gold being discovered, many miners who had not already left for the

Nome Gold Rush The Nome Gold Rush was a gold rush in Nome, Alaska, approximately 1899–1909.. It is separated from other gold rushes by the ease with which gold could be obtained. Much of the gold was lying in the beach sand of the landing place and could b ...

traveled to Fairbanks. The prospectors soon found jobs working for Barnette—prospecting for him by panning and

sluicing In syntax, sluicing is a type of ellipsis that occurs in both direct and indirect interrogative clauses. The ellipsis is introduced by a ''wh''-expression, whereby in most cases, everything except the ''wh''-expression is elided from the clause. S ...

for gold in Fairbanks. The Fairbanks Exploration Company bought up claims within a 30 by 50 mile area and brought in

gold dredge A gold dredge is a placer mining machine that extracts gold from sand, gravel, and dirt using water and mechanical methods. The original gold dredges were large, multi-story machines built in the first half of the 1900s. Small suction machin ...

s on the Alaska Railroad. The population of Fairbanks increased from 1,155 in 1920 to 2,101 in 1930. As

Ira Harkey Ira B. Harkey Jr. (January 15, 1918 – October 8, 2006) was an American writer, professor of journalism, and editor and publisher of the ''Pascagoula Chronicle-Star'' in Mississippi from 1951 to 1963. Harkey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize f ...

pointed out, "When the dredges finished their work, Fairbanks again shriveled. The dredges remain in the spots where they chewed their last bites, perfectly preserved in the dry arctic air, wooly mammoths for later ages." On July 22, 1910, approximately eight years after he had discovered gold north of Fairbanks, Felix Pedro died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Fairbanks of an apparent

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...

References

External links

Felice Pedroni (Felix Pedro), an Italian immigrant into the Alaska Gold Rush (Italian language, some sections in English language)
{{Financial bubbles 1902 in Alaska Alaskan gold rushes Fairbanks, Alaska Gold mining in Alaska Histories of cities in Alaska

History

See also

References

External links