E.T. Barnette
Encyclopedia
Elbridge Truman Barnette (1863May 22, 1933), Yukon riverboat captain, banker, and swindler, founded the city of Fairbanks, Alaska
and served as its first mayor.
. 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.
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 stampede
rs 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".
Barnette returned to Helena in 1898, where he married Isabelle Cleary.
to St. Michael. Back in Circle, he purchased the 124 foot steamer Arctic Boy, steaming down the Yukon to meet the cargo with the intention of carrying it back up the river to establish the trading post. At St. Michael, the Arctic Boy was loaded with 130 tons of merchandise, but the steamer ran aground before reaching the mouth of the Yukon and had to be beached in order to save the cargo. Having no other means to transport the merchandise further, Barnette and Smith sold it to local entrepreneurs, only to repurchase it when customs officer James H. Causten invested $6,000 in the enterprise in return for a third share of profits.
had just completed the U.S. Army's trail between Valdez and Eagle. The construction of the Valdez-Eagle Trail seemed to confirm Healy's vision of the "All-American Route" to the Klondike. But it was late in the year, when Alaska's glacier-fed rivers run shallow, and Adams doubted that the heavily-laden steamer could make it that far.
In August 1901, the Lavelle Young set out from St. Michael. Late in the month, it reached the shallow Bates Rapids (near Big Delta, Alaska
) of the Tanana River and could proceed no further. Barnette convinced Adams to attempt a detour. Believing that it was possible to use the Chena River
to bypass the Bates Rapids, Barnette directed Adams to return to the Chena Slough. But the plan failed when they ran up against sandbars only 6–8 miles above the mouth of the Chena River. Adams refused to proceed further. At 4 p.m. on August 26, the passengers and cargo were unloaded on a spruce
-covered bluff on the south side of the river. "We left Barnette furious," Adams recalled. "His wife was weeping on the bank."
Barnette's disappointment was somewhat relieved when an Italian prospector named Felice Pedroni and his partner Tom Gilmore arrived on the site and immediately purchased a winter's worth of supplies, including beans, bacon and flour. Pedroni and Gilmore were working the Tanana Hills, searching for a creek that had yielded gold some years earlier, when they caught sight of smoke from the Lavelle Young.
During the winter, Barnette sent Dan McCarty, one of his hired hands, to Valdez in order to escort Isabelle's brother, Frank J. Cleary, back to the post. McCarty and Cleary returned on February 20, 1902. Cleary was charged with taking care of the post while the Barnettes made a trip to Seattle to purchase additional supplies as well as a flat-bottomed boat capable of proceeding further up the Tanana. On March 10, E.T. and Isabelle set out by dogsled, crossing the Saint Elias Range to reach the port of Valdez. In Seattle, Barnette purchased a boat he named Isabelle, ordering it shipped in pieces to St. Michael.
The Isabelle was assembled to incorporate whatever machinery could be salvaged from the wrecked Arctic Boy. While Barnette was in St. Michael, overseeing the process, he made the acquaintance of district judge James Wickersham
, who had been appointed to the judgeship of the Third District
by President William McKinley
in 1900. Wickersham suggested to Barnette that he name his post on the Tanana after Wickersham's mentor, up-and-coming Indiana Senator Charles W. Fairbanks
. In his July 19, 1902 diary entry, Wickersham recorded that Barnette "promised to do so."
The Isabelle was completed in September, but once again it proved to be too late in the year to reach Tanana Crossing. The Isabelle could not even make it as far as Chenoa City, grounded by sandbars 4 miles downstream. When Barnette reached the post, using small boats to ferry supplies from the Isabelle, he was informed that Pedroni had finally located the rich vein that he had been looking for. Pedroni, who had been grubstake
d by Cleary in April, had returned in late July to confide his discovery.
, to Dawson to spread the news of Pedro's strike in order to drum up business. January 17, 1903, Dawson's Yukon Sun newspaper published a story entitled Rich Strike Made in the Tanana. Within two days, the story made the front page of The New York Times
. The Fairbanks Gold Rush
was on.
Abe Spring, a resident of the Tanana Valley since 1900, and an eventual mayor of Fairbanks, counted "seven or eight hundred people" who braved deadly cold to arrive in the Fairbanks Mining District during the winter of 1902-1903. But the first prospectors to reach Fairbanks were frustrated by creeks that could not be mined in winter and squeezed by price gouging
at Barnette's Trading Post. Barnette's monopoly allowed him to set his own prices and bundle products together in whatever fashion yielded the most profit. Prospectors who wanted to buy a bag of flour were also required to by three cases of canned goods. Hungry and destitute, an angry mob of stampeders threatened to lynch Wada, whose story had lured them from Dawson and Circle. Then they marched on Barnette's store. Barnette, expecting trouble, met the mob with a dozen riflemen at his side. Barnette eventually agreed to cut the price of flour by half and dropped the requirement to buy canned goods.
. He described the town as "just now in its formation period," with a tent city
of 500 people. "Miners, sourdoughs, cheechacos, gamblers, Indians, Negroes, Japanese, dogs, prostitutes, music, drinking! It is rough but healthy & the beginning, I hope, of an American Dawson."
On May 4, 1903, Barnette made a trip to Seattle, where was commissioned as postmaster of Fairbanks. In San Francisco, he sold a two-thirds interest in Barnette's Cache to the Northern Commercial Company (NCC). Some years later, NCC would purchase the store entirely. Barnette invested the proceeds in the Fairbanks Banking Company.
Lucrative discoveries of gold in Cleary Creek, Fairbanks Creek and Ester Creek created a boom economy. On November 10, 1903, the residents of Fairbanks voted to incorporate. An election was also held for the mayor and city council. Despite winning only 67 votes to John L. Long's 73 votes, Barnette insisted on being named the first mayor of Fairbanks, pressuring the city council until he got his way.
1904 was a landmark year for Barnette and his city. In the summer, Isabelle gave birth to Virginia, their first child. Barnette's Trading Post, only three years old, was demolished to make way for the Northern Commercial Company's expanded store. Barnette initiated the installation of a telephone system. Judge Wickersham, confirmed in his earlier assessment of the settlement, moved the seat of the Third Judicial District from Eagle to Fairbanks. In November, the city's namesake was elected Vice President of the United States
.
By 1905, the city had a church (St. Matthew's Episcopal Church), a hospital, and a bridge at Cushman Street spanning the Chena. The Tanana Mines Railway (later, the "Tanana Valley Railway") connected the city with the neighboring settlement at Chena
. Barnette purchased the Fairbanks News newspaper. By 1906, gold production had risen to $6,000,000 a year, and with a population which had surpassed 5,000, Fairbanks rivaled Nome
as Alaska's largest city.
Isabelle Barnette conceived a second child in 1910. Anticipating a difficult birth, she moved to Washington State, where there were better medical facilities. In 1911, a second daughter, Phyllis, was born.
On January 4, 1911, the Washington-Alaska Bank went bankrupt, abruptly closing its doors. Depositors in Fairbanks were out for $1 million. In the dark of March 27, 1911, Barnette fled Fairbanks, taking with him an estimated $500,000 ($10.5 million in 1990 dollars) of dubious provenance. Less than a week later, Barnette was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with embezzling $50,000. The trial took place in Valdez.
In December 1912, Barnette was found not guilty of on all accounts except for a misdemeanor charge of falsifying a financial report. Barnette was fined $1,000. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
editor W. F. Thompson called the trial "the rottenest judicial farce the North has ever witnessed." Effigies of Barnette's attorneys were burned at the foot of Cushman Street. Although officially exonerated, Barnette's reputation as a swindler was sealed. Newspapers in the city he had founded took up "Barnette" as a verb meaning "to steal" or "to defraud".
.
Barnette Street in Fairbanks is named for E.T. Barnette. The north-south streets of the original Fairbanks townsite were named for the prominent early residents of Fairbanks. The street began at the western edge of Barnette's trading post and ended at the townsite's southern boundaries, where Paul Rickert's farm began. In later years, this southern end of Barnette Street was very near the eastern end of Weeks Field
. The development of Bjerremark Subdivision starting in the 1950s extended Barnette Street into South Fairbanks. The two Barnette Streets do not connect, however.
In 1960, E.T. Barnette Elementary School was constructed in Fairbanks, one of several schools built by the Fairbanks Independent School District (the immediate predecessor to today's Fairbanks North Star Borough School District
) to handle the population boom in Fairbanks which followed World War II. Isabel Pass
in the Alaska Range
north of Paxson
is named for Isabelle Cleary Barnette.
Barnette is usually remembered by his initials, and there is some doubt about his first name: There are sources which record him as "Eldridge" or "Ebenezer T. Barnette." He appears in some contemporary official documents as "Elbridge T. Barnette".
Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...
and served as its first mayor.
Biography
He was born in 1863 in Akron, OhioAkron, Ohio
Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...
. In 1886, he was sentenced to four years in prison in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
state for stealing from a partner in a horse-trading venture in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Political connections of the Barnette family saw the sentence commuted after one year, on the condition that Barnette never return to Oregon.
Stampede to Dawson
Barnette was in Helena, MontanaHelena, Montana
Helena is the capital city of the U.S. state of Montana and the county seat of Lewis and Clark County. The 2010 census put the population at 28,180. The local daily newspaper is the Independent Record. The Helena Brewers minor league baseball and Helena Bighorns minor league hockey team call the...
in the summer of 1897 when he received the news of gold strikes in the Klondike
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
. On August 2, 1897, he arrived in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, where with 160 other passengers, he boarded the steamer Cleveland, bound for St. Michael, Alaska
St. Michael, Alaska
St. Michael is a city in Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 368.-Geography:St. Michael is located at on the east side of St...
on the Bering Sea
Bering Sea
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves....
. At St. Michael, Barnette partnered with other stampede
Stampede
A stampede is an act of mass impulse among herd animals or a crowd of people in which the herd collectively begins running with no clear direction or purpose....
rs to purchase another steamer, the St. Michael, with the intention of steaming up the Yukon River
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The source of the river is located in British Columbia, Canada. The next portion lies in, and gives its name to Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is long and empties into...
to Dawson
Dawson City, Yukon
The Town of the City of Dawson or Dawson City is a town in the Yukon, Canada.The population was 1,327 at the 2006 census. The area draws some 60,000 visitors each year...
. Barnette was nominated the captain. He was henceforth known as "Captain Barnette".
The St. Michael only made it as far as Circle, Alaska
Circle, Alaska
Circle is a census-designated place in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 100....
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
Valdez, Alaska
Valdez is a city in Valdez-Cordova Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 4,020. The city is one of the most important ports in Alaska. The port of Valdez was named in 1790 after the Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdés y...
to Eagle, Alaska
Eagle, Alaska
Eagle is a city located along the United States-Canada border in the Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. It includes Eagle Historic District, a U.S. National Historic Landmark. The population was 129 at the 2000 census...
, 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
Tanana River
The Tanana River is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon tene no, tenene, literally "trail river"....
(near modern day Tanacross, Alaska
Tanacross, Alaska
Tanacross is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 140...
). Barnette imagined such a settlement could grow to become the "Chicago of Alaska".
Barnette returned to Helena in 1898, where he married Isabelle Cleary.
Up the Tanana
In 1901, Barnette partnered with Charles Smith, an acquaintance from Circle, arranging for $20,000 in supplies to be shipped from San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
to St. Michael. Back in Circle, he purchased the 124 foot steamer Arctic Boy, steaming down the Yukon to meet the cargo with the intention of carrying it back up the river to establish the trading post. At St. Michael, the Arctic Boy was loaded with 130 tons of merchandise, but the steamer ran aground before reaching the mouth of the Yukon and had to be beached in order to save the cargo. Having no other means to transport the merchandise further, Barnette and Smith sold it to local entrepreneurs, only to repurchase it when customs officer James H. Causten invested $6,000 in the enterprise in return for a third share of profits.
The Lavelle Young
Barnette and Smith used the $6,000 from Causten to hire Charles Adams, captain of the 150 foot sternwheeler, the Lavelle Young. Captain Adams agreed to carry the E.T. and Isabelle Barnette, Charles Smith, their employees and their cargo to the head of navigation of the Tanana River, at least as far as the Chena Slough. This was 200 miles short of Tanana Crossing, where Captain William R. AbercrombieWilliam R. Abercrombie
William R. Abercrombie was a career U.S. Army officer during the late 19th century.Raised in Long Island, New York, Abercrombie was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army by PresidentU.S. Grant in 1877 and was assigned to the 2nd Infantry. He proceeded to the Pacific coast to join the Nez...
had just completed the U.S. Army's trail between Valdez and Eagle. The construction of the Valdez-Eagle Trail seemed to confirm Healy's vision of the "All-American Route" to the Klondike. But it was late in the year, when Alaska's glacier-fed rivers run shallow, and Adams doubted that the heavily-laden steamer could make it that far.
In August 1901, the Lavelle Young set out from St. Michael. Late in the month, it reached the shallow Bates Rapids (near Big Delta, Alaska
Big Delta, Alaska
Big Delta is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 749 at the 2000 census...
) of the Tanana River and could proceed no further. Barnette convinced Adams to attempt a detour. Believing that it was possible to use the Chena River
Chena River
The Chena River is a 100-mile-long river in the Interior region of the U.S. state of Alaska. It flows generally west from the White Mountains to the Tanana River near the city of Fairbanks, which is built on both sides of the river...
to bypass the Bates Rapids, Barnette directed Adams to return to the Chena Slough. But the plan failed when they ran up against sandbars only 6–8 miles above the mouth of the Chena River. Adams refused to proceed further. At 4 p.m. on August 26, the passengers and cargo were unloaded on a spruce
Spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea , a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical...
-covered bluff on the south side of the river. "We left Barnette furious," Adams recalled. "His wife was weeping on the bank."
Barnette's disappointment was somewhat relieved when an Italian prospector named Felice Pedroni and his partner Tom Gilmore arrived on the site and immediately purchased a winter's worth of supplies, including beans, bacon and flour. Pedroni and Gilmore were working the Tanana Hills, searching for a creek that had yielded gold some years earlier, when they caught sight of smoke from the Lavelle Young.
Chenoa City
Barnette and his crew set about constructing a temporary trading post consisting of two log buildings: A 26 by 54 foot store called "Barnette's Cache" (later, "Barnette's Trading Post"), and a small cabin to serve as the Barnettes' residence. The buildings were raised on the site of what would later become the heart of downtown Fairbanks, between Cowles Street and Cushman Street. Barnette named the post "Chenoa City." He decided to pass the winter there, continuing up river to Tanana Crossing the following summer.During the winter, Barnette sent Dan McCarty, one of his hired hands, to Valdez in order to escort Isabelle's brother, Frank J. Cleary, back to the post. McCarty and Cleary returned on February 20, 1902. Cleary was charged with taking care of the post while the Barnettes made a trip to Seattle to purchase additional supplies as well as a flat-bottomed boat capable of proceeding further up the Tanana. On March 10, E.T. and Isabelle set out by dogsled, crossing the Saint Elias Range to reach the port of Valdez. In Seattle, Barnette purchased a boat he named Isabelle, ordering it shipped in pieces to St. Michael.
The Isabelle was assembled to incorporate whatever machinery could be salvaged from the wrecked Arctic Boy. While Barnette was in St. Michael, overseeing the process, he made the acquaintance of district judge James Wickersham
James Wickersham
James Wickersham was a district judge for Alaska, appointed by U.S. President William McKinley to the Third Judicial District in 1900. He resigned his post in 1908 and was subsequently elected as Alaska's delegate to Congress, serving until 1917 and then being re-elected in 1930...
, who had been appointed to the judgeship of the Third District
United States territorial court
The United States territorial courts are tribunals established in territories of the United States by the United States Congress, pursuant to its power under Article Four of the United States Constitution, the Territorial Clause...
by President William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
in 1900. Wickersham suggested to Barnette that he name his post on the Tanana after Wickersham's mentor, up-and-coming Indiana Senator Charles W. Fairbanks
Charles W. Fairbanks
Charles Warren Fairbanks was a Senator from Indiana and the 26th Vice President of the United States ....
. In his July 19, 1902 diary entry, Wickersham recorded that Barnette "promised to do so."
The Isabelle was completed in September, but once again it proved to be too late in the year to reach Tanana Crossing. The Isabelle could not even make it as far as Chenoa City, grounded by sandbars 4 miles downstream. When Barnette reached the post, using small boats to ferry supplies from the Isabelle, he was informed that Pedroni had finally located the rich vein that he had been looking for. Pedroni, who had been grubstake
Grubstake
Grubstake, known also as Apache Gold, is an american western movie directed by Larry Buchanan.-Cast:*Stephen Wyman*Jack Klugman*Neile Adams*Lynn Shubert*Kort Falkenberg...
d by Cleary in April, had returned in late July to confide his discovery.
The Fairbanks Gold Rush
Barnette abandoned his plan to continue to Tanana Crossing. On September 27, 1902 he was elected recorder for the newly-formed Fairbanks Mining District. At the end of December, with the most immediately profitable claims recorded, Barnette dispatched an employee, a Japanese adventurer named Jujiro WadaJujiro Wada
Jujiro Wada was a Japanese adventurer and entrepreneur who achieved fame for his exploits in turn-of-the-20th-century Alaska and Yukon Territory.-Origins:...
, to Dawson to spread the news of Pedro's strike in order to drum up business. January 17, 1903, Dawson's Yukon Sun newspaper published a story entitled Rich Strike Made in the Tanana. Within two days, the story made the front page of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The Fairbanks Gold Rush
Fairbanks Gold Rush
The Fairbanks Gold Rush was a gold rush that took place in Fairbanks, Alaska in the early 1900s. Fairbanks was a city largely built on Gold Rush fervor at the beginning of the 20th century. Discovery and exploration continue to thrive in and around modern-day Fairbanks.- History :Felix Pedro spent...
was on.
Abe Spring, a resident of the Tanana Valley since 1900, and an eventual mayor of Fairbanks, counted "seven or eight hundred people" who braved deadly cold to arrive in the Fairbanks Mining District during the winter of 1902-1903. But the first prospectors to reach Fairbanks were frustrated by creeks that could not be mined in winter and squeezed by price gouging
Price gouging
Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a crime that applies in some of the United States during civil emergencies...
at Barnette's Trading Post. Barnette's monopoly allowed him to set his own prices and bundle products together in whatever fashion yielded the most profit. Prospectors who wanted to buy a bag of flour were also required to by three cases of canned goods. Hungry and destitute, an angry mob of stampeders threatened to lynch Wada, whose story had lured them from Dawson and Circle. Then they marched on Barnette's store. Barnette, expecting trouble, met the mob with a dozen riflemen at his side. Barnette eventually agreed to cut the price of flour by half and dropped the requirement to buy canned goods.
Mayor of "an American Dawson"
James Wickersham, traveling from Dawson to Fairbanks in March, noted crowds of "stampeders" on the road. Wickersham arrived on April 9 to swear in J. Tod Cowles as the Justice of the PeaceJustice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
. He described the town as "just now in its formation period," with a tent city
Tent City
A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents. Informal tent cities may be set up without authorization by homeless people or protesters. As well, state governments or military organizations set up tent cities to house refugees, evacuees, or soldiers...
of 500 people. "Miners, sourdoughs, cheechacos, gamblers, Indians, Negroes, Japanese, dogs, prostitutes, music, drinking! It is rough but healthy & the beginning, I hope, of an American Dawson."
On May 4, 1903, Barnette made a trip to Seattle, where was commissioned as postmaster of Fairbanks. In San Francisco, he sold a two-thirds interest in Barnette's Cache to the Northern Commercial Company (NCC). Some years later, NCC would purchase the store entirely. Barnette invested the proceeds in the Fairbanks Banking Company.
Lucrative discoveries of gold in Cleary Creek, Fairbanks Creek and Ester Creek created a boom economy. On November 10, 1903, the residents of Fairbanks voted to incorporate. An election was also held for the mayor and city council. Despite winning only 67 votes to John L. Long's 73 votes, Barnette insisted on being named the first mayor of Fairbanks, pressuring the city council until he got his way.
1904 was a landmark year for Barnette and his city. In the summer, Isabelle gave birth to Virginia, their first child. Barnette's Trading Post, only three years old, was demolished to make way for the Northern Commercial Company's expanded store. Barnette initiated the installation of a telephone system. Judge Wickersham, confirmed in his earlier assessment of the settlement, moved the seat of the Third Judicial District from Eagle to Fairbanks. In November, the city's namesake was elected Vice President of the United States
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
.
By 1905, the city had a church (St. Matthew's Episcopal Church), a hospital, and a bridge at Cushman Street spanning the Chena. The Tanana Mines Railway (later, the "Tanana Valley Railway") connected the city with the neighboring settlement at Chena
Chena, Alaska
For information on the modern town sometimes known by the name of Chena, go to Chena Hot Springs, Alaska.Chena was a small town in interior Alaska near the confluence of the Chena and Tanana rivers whose heyday was in the first two decades of the 1900s, with a peak population of about 400 in 1907...
. Barnette purchased the Fairbanks News newspaper. By 1906, gold production had risen to $6,000,000 a year, and with a population which had surpassed 5,000, Fairbanks rivaled Nome
Nome, Alaska
Nome is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska, located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. According to the 2010 Census, the city population was 3,598. Nome was incorporated on April 9, 1901, and was once the...
as Alaska's largest city.
Causten v. Barnette
On May 22, 1906, Fairbanks was ravaged by a fire that destroyed most of the buildings. The same year, Barnette was brought to court by James H. Causten, Barnette's backer from 1901. Barnette had not honored his promise to share a third of profits from the venture which in five years had made him a wealthy man. Before the Washington State Supreme Court, Causten demanded a half of the assets Barnette had accumulated since the time of Causten's investment. Barnette protested that Causten was only entitled to one-third of what had been earned or acquired during the first winter at Chenoa City. During proceedings, Barnette's 1886 imprisonment became public. The Fairbanks Daily Times (which had only begun publishing a daily edition that year) ran a banner headline: "EX-CONVICT". On June 26, 1908 the court ruled in favor of Causten, ordering Barnette to pay Causten a third of any assets acquired since he arrived in the Tanana Valley. Among other things, the court observed that “The conduct of appellant Barnette in connection with the suit is not calculated to inspire the greatest confidence.”The Washington-Alaska Bank
Barnette purchased the Washington-Alaska Bank in 1909, just as Fairbanks gold production reached its peak. In August 1910, he merged the Fairbanks Banking Company into the Washington-Alaska Bank. Barnette was named the president of the amalgamated bank.Isabelle Barnette conceived a second child in 1910. Anticipating a difficult birth, she moved to Washington State, where there were better medical facilities. In 1911, a second daughter, Phyllis, was born.
On January 4, 1911, the Washington-Alaska Bank went bankrupt, abruptly closing its doors. Depositors in Fairbanks were out for $1 million. In the dark of March 27, 1911, Barnette fled Fairbanks, taking with him an estimated $500,000 ($10.5 million in 1990 dollars) of dubious provenance. Less than a week later, Barnette was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with embezzling $50,000. The trial took place in Valdez.
In December 1912, Barnette was found not guilty of on all accounts except for a misdemeanor charge of falsifying a financial report. Barnette was fined $1,000. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is a morning daily newspaper that serves the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the Denali Borough, and the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the United States state of Alaska. It is the farthest north daily newspaper in the United States, and...
editor W. F. Thompson called the trial "the rottenest judicial farce the North has ever witnessed." Effigies of Barnette's attorneys were burned at the foot of Cushman Street. Although officially exonerated, Barnette's reputation as a swindler was sealed. Newspapers in the city he had founded took up "Barnette" as a verb meaning "to steal" or "to defraud".
Later life and legacy
The Barnette family resettled in Los Angeles. In 1918, Isabelle filed for divorce after finding love letters to E.T. from another woman. In 1920, Isabelle was granted custody of the two daughters. E.T. Barnette lived for a time on a palatial estate in Mexico. He died in Los Angeles on May 22, 1933 after injuries sustained in a fall. Isabelle Cleary Barnette died in September 1942 at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, CaliforniaSan Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
.
Barnette Street in Fairbanks is named for E.T. Barnette. The north-south streets of the original Fairbanks townsite were named for the prominent early residents of Fairbanks. The street began at the western edge of Barnette's trading post and ended at the townsite's southern boundaries, where Paul Rickert's farm began. In later years, this southern end of Barnette Street was very near the eastern end of Weeks Field
Weeks Field
Weeks Field was the first airport for the city of Fairbanks, Alaska. It was built in 1923 on the site of a baseball field named Weeks Ball Park, which had served as an impromptu landing strip for airplanes prior to the construction of the airport. On July 4, 1923, Carl Ben Eielson flew the first...
. The development of Bjerremark Subdivision starting in the 1950s extended Barnette Street into South Fairbanks. The two Barnette Streets do not connect, however.
In 1960, E.T. Barnette Elementary School was constructed in Fairbanks, one of several schools built by the Fairbanks Independent School District (the immediate predecessor to today's Fairbanks North Star Borough School District
Fairbanks North Star Borough School District
The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District is a public school district based in Fairbanks, Alaska . With a student enrollment of slightly over 14,000, it is the state's second largest public school district....
) to handle the population boom in Fairbanks which followed World War II. Isabel Pass
Isabel Pass
Isabel Pass is a gap in the eastern section of the Alaska Range which serves as a corridor for the Richardson Highway about 11 miles from Paxson....
in the Alaska Range
Alaska Range
The Alaska Range is a relatively narrow, 650-km-long mountain range in the southcentral region of the U.S. state of Alaska, from Lake Clark at its southwest end to the White River in Canada's Yukon Territory in the southeast...
north of Paxson
Paxson, Alaska
Paxson is a census-designated place in Valdez-Cordova Census Area, Alaska, United States. As of the 2000 census, its population was 43. It is located on the Richardson Highway at the junction with the Denali Highway.-Geography:...
is named for Isabelle Cleary Barnette.
Barnette is usually remembered by his initials, and there is some doubt about his first name: There are sources which record him as "Eldridge" or "Ebenezer T. Barnette." He appears in some contemporary official documents as "Elbridge T. Barnette".