How Fairbanks, Alaska Got Its Name From an Indiana Senator

Fairbanks, Alaska, started out as Barnette’s Cache, a trading post. In 1902 it took the name of an Indiana senator who’d later be vice president. Local history gives a federal judge the credit for that, but the government records leave him out.

A trading post on the Chena

E. T. Barnette set up a trading post on the Chena River in 1901, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s place-name record. It was first called “Barnettes Cache.”

Then came gold. The USGS record says Felix Pedro found it in 1902, and the little post turned into the supply center for the mining region to its north.

The judge and the senator

The name change came the same year. Charles Warren Fairbanks was a U.S. senator from Indiana at the time, and the government’s 1906 gazetteer of Alaska, compiled by Marcus Baker, says “the town and district were named in honor of United States Senator Charles Warren Fairbanks, of Indiana, afterwards Vice-President.”

Baker doesn’t say who suggested it. The story usually told in Fairbanks is that Judge James Wickersham, the federal judge for the district, put the idea to Barnette, and Alaska’s state parks agency tells it that way on its page for Wickersham’s old house. We could only read that page, and the Fairbanks histories that repeat the story, in part. Baker’s book and the federal record don’t mention the judge at all; they just name the senator. So the senator is certain, and the judge’s part is the story people tell.

A name that kept spreading

Fairbanks didn’t stop at the town. Baker lists a Fairbanks Creek that feeds Fish Creek, in the Little Chena River country, “named after Senator (afterwards Vice-President) Fairbanks,” and he notes that the mining district carried the name too. Orth’s 1967 USGS dictionary still lists “Barnettes Cache” as a variant name of the city.

The senator did go on to bigger things. GNIS gives his dates as 1852 to 1918 and says he became vice president under Theodore Roosevelt. If you live in Fairbanks today, you’re living in a city named for an Indiana senator, on the spot where a trader set up shop.

Sources & further reading

• U.S. Geological Survey, GNIS feature 1401958. Founded in 1901 as a trading post by E. T. Barnette; “First called ‘Barnettes Cache,’” renamed in 1902 for Charles Warren Fairbanks, 1852 to 1918, senator from Indiana and vice president under Theodore Roosevelt; Felix Pedro’s gold find in 1902; post office 1903.
• Marcus Baker, Geographic Dictionary of Alaska, 2nd ed. (USGS Bulletin 299, 1906), p. 249. “The town and district were named in honor of United States Senator Charles Warren Fairbanks, of Indiana, afterwards Vice-President”; Fairbanks Creek, “named after Senator (afterwards Vice-President) Fairbanks.”
• Donald J. Orth, Dictionary of Alaska Place Names (USGS, 1967), entry “Fairbanks.” The same account as GNIS, with “Barnettes Cache” listed as a variant name.
• Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks, “Wickersham State Historic Site.” The local story that Judge James Wickersham suggested the name to Barnette (read only in part).