The municipal finances are derived from a share in federal licenses, from the income derived from the local court, from poll taxes, and from local taxation of real and personal property. From all these sources the municipal treasury was enriched during the year of 1906 by about ninety-five thousand dollars.
Each of the three banks operates an assay office under the supervision of an expert. The population of the district is from fifteen to twenty thousand, of which five thousand belong permanently to the town. The climate is dry and sparkling; the summers are delightful, the winters still and not colder than those of Minnesota, Montana, and the Dakotas, but without the blizzards of those states. In 1906 the coldest month was January, the daily mean temperature being thirty-six degrees below zero, but dry and still. Travel over the trail by dog team is continued throughout the winter, skating and other outdoor sports being as common as in Canada.
Five saw-mills are in operation, with an aggregate daily capacity of a hundred and ten thousand feet, the entire product being used locally. There is an abundance of poplar, spruce, hemlock, and birch; an unlimited water supply; a municipal steam-heating plant; two good hospitals; two daily newspapers; graded schools,—the four-year course of the high school admitting the student to the Washington State University and to high educational institutions of other states; a Chamber of Commerce and a Business Men's Association; twelve hotels, five of which are first class; while every industry is represented several times over.
This is Fairbanks, the six-year-old mining-camp of the Tanana Valley.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
Sunrise on Behring Sea
CHAPTER XLVIII
At Tanana our party was enlarged by a party of four gentlemen, headed by Governor Wilford B. Hoggatt, of Juneau, who was on a tour of inspection of the country he serves.