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The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. The area had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but a permanent settlement was not established at the site of Fairbanks until the 20th century.

The discovery of gold near Barnette's trading post caused him to turn what had been a temporary stop into a permanent one. The gold caused a stampede of miners to the area, and buildings sprang up around Barnette's trading post. In November 1903, the area's residents voted to incorporate the city of Fairbanks. Barnette became the city's first mayor, and the city flourished as thousands of people came in search of gold during the Fairbanks Gold Rush.

By the time of World War I, the easy-to-reach gold was exhausted and Fairbanks' population plunged as miners moved to promising finds at Ruby and Iditarod. Construction of the Alaska Railroad caused a surge of economic activity and allowed heavy equipment to be brought in for further exploitation of Fairbanks' gold deposits. Enormous gold dredges were built north of Fairbanks, and the city grew throughout the 1930s as the price of gold rose during the Great Depression. A further boom came during the 1940s and 1950s as the city became a staging area for construction of military depots during World War II and the first decade of the Cold War.

In 1968, the vast Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was discovered in Alaska's North Slope. Fairbanks became a supply point for exploitation of the oil field and for construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which caused a boom unseen since the first years of Fairbanks' founding and helped the town recover from the devastating 1967 Fairbanks Flood. Fairbanks became a government center in the late 1960s with the establishment of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, which took Fairbanks as its borough seat. A drop in oil prices during the 1980s caused a recession in the Fairbanks area, but the city gradually recovered as oil prices climbed during the 1990s. Tourism also became an important factor in Fairbanks' economy, and the growth of the tourism industry and the city continues even as oil production declines.

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