E.T. Barnette

E.T. Barnette. Founder, Swindler, Shady Trader, Banker. , Every summer in July, Fairbanks celebrates "Golden Days" in memory of Felix Pedro, a beloved, humble figure. Though there is a Barnette Elementary School and a Barnette street-there is no Barnette celebration. It took only 10 years for E. T. Barnette to have the luck, courage and gumption to found, pioneer and develop Fairbanks, and then to turn the residents of the "largest log cabin city in the world" against him. A convicted felon in his youth (Barnette stole $2,300 from his partner by hiding the cash under a horse blanket), Barnette lived in Alaska as a prospector, riverboat captain, trader, postmaster general, mayor of Fairbanks, millionaire banker, then as a land baron-fruit rancher in Mexico and an oil man in Montana., This impressive resume did not keep the early residents of Fairbanks from wishing him a "nicely noosed rope." Barnette routinely charged exorbitant prices for flour at his trading post ($12 per bag)-he stole the mayoral election and he bilked hundreds of residents who kept their money and gold in his Fairbanks Banking Co., by trading depositors' cash for Gold Bar Lumber Co. stock. Its value plummeted by three-quarters and the bank failed as a result. The News-Miner editorial of the day said: "He came here a poor man but by the labor of his brains he has juggled finances, imposed and collected usury, bought 'law' and 'justice,' confiscated legally the (gold) mines of the camps, until today he is independently rich.", After Barnette's departure, early Fairbanksans burned three effigies of him, Isabelle Barnette divorced him, and the Mexican government repatriated most of his assets while Mexican bandits chased him. E. T. Barnette never returned to Alaska and he was rumored to have died alone and unloved in Montana or Mexico or Los Angeles. Barnette, the founder of Fairbanks, disappeared, a rogue Alaskan legend., Thanks to Terrence Cole and his book: "E.T. Barnette, The Strange Story of the Man Who Founded Fairbanks"