Elbridge Truman Barnette

Elbridge Truman Barnette (1863 – May 22, 1933), Yukon riverboat captain, banker, and swindler, founded the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, and served as its first mayor.

He was born in 1863 in Akron, Ohio. In 1886, he was sentenced to four years in prison in Oregon state for stealing from a partner in a horse-trading venture in Canada. Political connections of the Barnette family saw the sentence commuted after one year, on the condition that Barnette never return to Oregon.

Barnette was in Helena, Montana in the summer of 1897 when he received the news of gold strikes in the Klondike. On August 2, 1897, he arrived in Seattle, Washington, where with 160 other passengers, he boarded the steamer Cleveland, bound for St. Michael, Alaska on the Bering Sea. At St. Michael, Barnette partnered with other stampeders to purchase another steamer, the St. Michael, with the intention of steaming up the Yukon River to Dawson. Barnette was nominated the captain. He was henceforth known as "Captain Barnette".

The St. Michael only made it as far as Circle, Alaska, before a series of misfortunes including a breakdown, a fire, an outbreak of disease among the crew, and the freezing over of the Yukon halted any further progress. Barnette set out for Dawson by dogsled, but he arrived to find himself months too late: Every creek already had been staked.

Barnette took a job in Dawson managing mines for the North American Trading and Transportation Company (NT&T). At NT&T, he made the acquaintance of John Healy, an entrepreneur from Montana. Healy laid out a plan to build a railroad from Valdez, Alaska, to Eagle, Alaska, what he called an "All-American Route" to the Klondike. Barnette came away with the idea of establishing a trading post at the halfway point, where the railroad would cross the Tanana River (near modern-day Tanacross, Alaska). Barnette imagined such a settlement could grow to become the "Chicago of Alaska".

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