The County Line
A sign along 126th Street east of Keystone Parkway identifies an intersecting street as Fairbanks Drive. In Alaska on Airport Way approaching the state’s second largest city, a sign reads Welcome to Fairbanks. There is a historic connection here.
I was reminded last week of the Hoosier for whom both the Carmel street and the Alaska city are named. You see, Charles Warren Fairbanks was vice president of the United States. His family owned a farm near Carmel where the Cool Creek subdivision is now located.
I was in Alaska last week with an old college friend, and told him of the Fairbanks connection. Weather was still reasonably warm in Fairbanks which is home to the impressive University of Alaska main campus.
At the campus the story of Fairbanks’ founding is told. It seems that a steamboat captain, Elbridge Barnette, decided to set up a trading post for miners on the banks of the Chena River, which soon prospered. At the suggestion of a friend from Indiana, Barnette named the settlement Fairbanks in 1901.
Meanwhile, back in Indiana, Charles Fairbanks was not yet vice president. He was a U.S. Senator. But, in 1904 Theodore Roosevelt chose Fairbanks to be his running mate. He moved to Washington, but his daughter and her husband took up residence on the Carmel area farm. Members of the family are still in the area.
When a large portion of the farm was sold in the 1960s, the developer named one of the subdivision streets Fairbanks Drive.