Barnette Monument

E.T. Barnette was the founding father of Fair­banks. This tribute commemorates his ac­cidental landing at approximately this spot on the riverbank in 1901, when the steamer Lavelle Young, which he had hired to trans­port a $20,000 shipment of food, tools, and other merchandise, could go no further. The anchor visible down the path to your right, found in the Chena River, was used by an old sternwheeler like the one that brought Barnette to this spot. Barnette became Fair­banks’s first mayor, its first postmaster, and the richest man in town. But he didn’t stay very long. He left Fairbanks one night in 1911 in disgrace, after being accused of embezzling one million dollars from the Washington-Alaska Bank. Even though he was convicted of only one misdemeanor by a jury in Valdez, it is said “that the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner would refer to the act of rob­bing banks or stealing money as ‘Barnetting.’”