Alaska's Early Election History: Fairbanks' First Mayor Stole The Election

COPPER RIVER COUNTRY JOURNAL 

Fairbanks Founding Father E.T. Barnette Was A Known Scoundrel 

E.T. Barnette, circa 1905. (UA Museum Of The North) 

KEY POINTS

• E.T. Barnette, founder of Fairbanks, didn't accept it when he lost the election for the first mayor of that town in 1903.

• Barnette named himself mayor, and continued a life of swindling and crime in Fairbanks, eventually embezzling millions and fleeing to California. 

• Nevertheless, his name is attached to a Fairbanks school, a street, a celebratory brass sign, and a reconstructed sternwheeler wheelhouse at Pioneer Park. 

During the Alaska Gold Rush, the town known as Fairbanks was Alaska's version of Dawson City, with plenty of partying and carrying-on. Like the Klondike, Fairbanks had its scam artists, and E.T. Barnette, a  horse-trading swindler who had already been sentenced to 4 years in prison in Oregon when he first arrived up north, and who is now considered the city's founding father, was definitely the worst.

E.T. Barnette, the 1st mayor of Fairbanks, got his job as the head of the new little city in the most unusual way. He stole it. 

In 1903, only five years after the ill-fated gold rush through the Copper Valley, the little town of Fairbanks held an election for mayor. A man named John L. Long got the majority of the votes, according to the book, 'Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land,' by Walter Bornerman.

Long got 73 votes for mayor in the election held in the town of 500 people. Barnette got 67. 

He didn't accept it, and, according to Terrence Cole's definitive 1989 book, E.T. Barnette: The Strange Story of the Man who Founded Fairbanks, Barnette insisted he should be made mayor.

He forced the city council to throw out the votes for John L. Long, and he did become the mayor. 

The Lavelle Young Sternwheeler reconstructed wheelhouse
at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. (Journal archives)

In 1901, Barnette had left St. Michael, on the coast of Alaska, and headed upriver with tons of merchandise, to start a trading post. Running aground in Fairbanks he started his store, and forced local people who bought a bag of flour to also buy three cases of canned goods, leading to a showdown with a mob of angry Fairbanksans, who caught on that he had once been a convict. The Fairbanks Daily Times ran a banner headline about him, blaring out the words: 'EX-CONVICT.'

Eventually, in Fairbanks, the name 'Barnette' was turned into a term for stealing and cheating. As in (perhaps) 'He pulled a Barnette.' 

"Barnette Landing" commemorative plaque in downtown Fairbanks at the spot where the Lavelle Young sternwheeler ran aground and E.T. Barnette began his trading post. (Photo, Country Journal archives) 

Barnette went on to rip off his financial backers, and got sued by them. But he survived, and started a bank in Fairbanks, become its president, and then, when it went bankrupt in 1911, he stole the equivalent of millions of dollars, fled Fairbanks in the middle of the night, and was arrested in Los Angeles. 

His wife divorced him for cheating. 

Google Maps showing Barnette Street. 

But Fairbanks itself is a far more forgiving town; the E.T. Barnette School and Barnette Street were both named after him. There's a memorial celebrating his arrival near the Chena River, where his boat, the Lavelle Young, first came aground, dumping him there at what would become his trading post. 

And the Lavelle Young sternwheeler's pilot's wheel is in the Pioneer Museum at Pioneer Park.