Golden Heart Plaza

The Golden Heart Plaza at First Avenue and Cushman Street is home to a monument paying tribute to entrepreneur E.T. Barnette, who was forced to take a detour up the Chena River on his way to setting up a supply store elsewhere.

Facing low water, the Lavelle Young riverboat left him here in 1901. Barnette and his wife reluctantly set up business. Just a few months later, gold was discovered in the area, and they were perfectly placed to make a fortune. As the name suggests, the Golden Heart Plaza is at the center of where the gold rush mania happened, and it was completed in 1986 after being inspired by suggestions to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Alaska’s 1959 awarding of statehood.

A concrete, multi-level plaza that features some 70 plaques that contain the names of Interior Alaskan families, organizations, institutions, historical information about the industries that have shaped the city, and even the music and lyrics to the song “Alaska’s Flag.”

Dominating the plaza is an impressive fountain statue named Unknown First Family, which was designed by Malcolm Alexander. At the unveiling, he said that it portrays “the family of all mankind, the family of Fairbanks, and the nuclear family, let symbolize, for families present and future, the pride and dignity of this great land.”  

The statue stands over 18 feet high and highlights this fur-dressed family and their two loyal dogs, who stand back-to-back and face every direction they might have been traveling to or from. 

Hard to miss, or hard not to hear, is the 33-foot-high, four-faced carillon clock tower, which was commissioned by the local Rotary Club to celebrate its 50th anniversary in September 1990. It features clear and musical London-style Westminster Chimes to mark the time, among other songs. On the column, there is a plaque with the poem “Bells of Rotary,” written by William Ransom Wood, a former politician and leader of the University of Alaska. From the plaza, you can take a riverwalk in either direction towards the six community parks covering 100 acres, or visit the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center.

A little further on is the huge Lend-Lease Monument, which celebrates the strategic and social importance of Alaska in the World War II program that saw over 8,000 U.S.-manufactured aircraft and supplies ferried from the lower 48 states and over Canada to Ladd Field in Fairbanks, where Russian pilots then flew them into the Japanese, German, and Italian theaters of war.

On the opposite end of the Plaza, the distinctive, grass-roofed log cabin was constructed in 1958 and was formerly the Fairbanks Visitor Center before recently becoming the home of the 300-mile Yukon Quest race, which sets off on the frozen river here in February.  

A few steps from the cabin is the Milepost, one of many that follow an Alaskan tradition that originated and is still used today to orient travelers along the Alaska Highway from Canada. This large milepost lists the miles between Fairbanks and 76 different cities around the world.