Fairbanks, the Yukon, and the Interior
We’ve compiled the best of the best in Fairbanks, the Yukon, and the Interior - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
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We’ve compiled the best of the best in Fairbanks, the Yukon, and the Interior - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
This riverside park is the hub of downtown celebrations, including free evening concerts. The plaza is dominated by the towering statue of the Unknown First Family, encircled by plaques containing the names of 4,500 local families who contributed to the building of the plaza.
On the fringes of the University of Alaska campus is a 134-acre home to dozens of musk ox and domestic reindeer. Resident and visiting scientists study these large ungulates to better understand their physiologies and adaptations to Arctic conditions. The station also serves as a valuable outreach program. Once nearly eradicated from Alaska, the shaggy, prehistoric-looking beasts known as musk oxen are marvels of adaptive physiques and behaviors. Their qiviut, the delicate undercoat of soft hair, is combed out (without harming the animals) and made into yarn for scarves, hats, and gloves. The station has this unprocessed wool and yarn for sale to help fund the care of the animals. On tours you visit the pens for a close-up look at the animals and their young while learning about the biology and ecology of the animals from a naturalist. Call ahead to arrange tours from mid-September through mid-May; otherwise you can just stop by.
The Elliott Highway, which starts 10 miles north of Fairbanks in Fox, takes you to the Tanana River and the small community of Manley Hot Springs. Residents maintain a small public campground across from the Manley Roadhouse. Northern pike are caught in the nearby slough, and a dirt road leads to the Tanana River, with its summer runs of salmon. The Manley Hot Springs Resort has closed, but the hot springs are only a short walk from the campground. The highway is paved for the first 73 miles from Fairbanks, until the junction with the Dalton Highway.
Visitors fill the warm mountaintop lodges at Mt. Aurora from 9 pm to 3 am on winter nights. Images from an aurora webcam are shown on a large-screen TV. The admission fee includes hot drinks.
The company offers single and multiday winter aurora tours going north to the Arctic Circle and the Brooks Range.
The 44-acre park is along the Chena River near downtown Fairbanks and has several museums, an art gallery, theater, civic center, children's playground, antique merry-go-round, minigolf course, and multiple restaurants. Owned and operated by the borough, the park also has a re-created gold-rush town with historic buildings saved from urban renewal, log-cabin gift shops, and a narrow-gauge train that circles the park. No-frills (dry) RV camping is available in the parking lot for $12 a night. No reservation is necessary.
The landmark Rika's Roadhouse, part of the 10-acre Big Delta State Historical Park, is a good detour for the free tours of the beautifully restored and meticulously maintained grounds, gardens, and historic buildings. In the past, roadhouses were erected at fairly regular intervals in the north, providing everything a traveler might need. Rika's, which operated from 1913 to 1947, is far and away the prettiest and best preserved of the survivors. It's a great place to get out, stretch, and buy homemade sandwiches and pies from the adjacent café.
If you stop in North Pole, don't skip this shop. Look for the gigantic 42-foot Santa statue and the Christmas murals on the side of the building, as well as the year-round department-store-style display windows. Inside, you'll find toys, gifts, Alaska handicrafts, and, of course, Christmas cookies. Santa is on duty to talk to children in summer and during the holiday season. Also in summer, visit Antler Academy inside the red reindeer barn, where guests can interact with Santa's sleigh team. And yes, you can get your mail sent with a genuine North Pole postmark, a service offered since 1952.
The 161-mile Steese Highway follows the Chatanika River and several other creeks along the southern part of the White Mountains. The highway eventually climbs into weatherworn alpine mountains, peaking at Eagle Summit (3,624 feet), about 100 miles from Fairbanks, before dropping back down into forested creek beds en route to the town of Central. From Central you can drive the 30-plus miles on a winding gravel road to Circle, a small town on the Yukon River. The highway is paved to Mile 81 and is usually in good shape. A possible exception is in winter, when Eagle Summit is sometimes closed due to drifting snow.
For those who want to immerse themselves in nature for several days at a time, the Steese National Conservation Area and the White Mountains National Recreation Area have opportunities for backcountry hiking and paddling. Both areas have road-accessible entry points, but you cannot drive into the Steese Conservation Area. The White Mountains Recreation Area has limited camping facilities from June to November; reservations are not accepted. Winter adventurers can snowmachine or snowshoe out to 12 public-use cabins and two shelters; none are accessible by car.
The 160-mile Taylor Highway runs north from the Alaska Highway at Tetlin Junction, 12 miles east of Tok. It's a narrow rough-gravel road that winds along mountain ridges and through valleys of the Fortymile River. The road passes the tiny community of Chicken and ends in Eagle at the Yukon River. This is one of only three places in Alaska where the Yukon River can be reached by road. The Top of the World Highway starts off the Taylor and leads to Dawson City in the Yukon Territory. The route is far more scenic, and shorter, than the alternative of taking the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse and then turning north, but it's another of those stretches for which it's good to make sure your insurance policy covers towing and windshield replacement. The highway is not plowed in winter, so it is snowed shut from fall to spring. If you're roughing it, know that the Bureau of Land Management also maintains three first-come, first-served campsites (as all BLM campsites are) on the Taylor Highway at Miles 49, 82, and 160; the last is located at the end of the road in Eagle.
This 700,000-acre refuge has most of the charismatic megafauna that visitors travel to Alaska to see, including black and grizzly bears, moose, Dall sheep, wolves, caribou, and tons of birds. Covering just south of the Alaska Highway east of the town of Tok all the way to the U.S.–Canada border, the refuge has a visitor center at Mile 1,229. A large deck here has spotting scopes, and inside are maps, books, and wildlife exhibits, as well as a board with information on current road conditions. At Mile 1,240 you can hike a 1-mile raised-plank boardwalk through lowland forest to scenic Hidden Lake. Basic lakefront campgrounds can be found at Miles 1,249 and 1,256 during the summer season.
This shop has a large selection of Alaska handicrafts as well as a mounted wildlife display and a yard full of spruce-burl sculptures that photographers find hard to resist. Burls are actually caused by parasites in the living tree, and they create beautiful patterns in the wood. Don't forget to scoop up one of 50 ice cream flavors at the spruce-burl counter.
To help with your planning, stop in at Tok's visitor center, which has travel information covering the entire state, as well as wildlife and natural-history exhibits. This is one of Alaska's largest info centers, and the staff is quite helpful.
Just north of Fairbanks you can see and touch the famous Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This 48-inch-diameter pipe travels 800 miles from the oil fields on the North Slope of the Brooks Range over three mountain ranges and over more than 500 rivers and streams to the terminal in Valdez. There the crude oil is pumped onto tanker ships and transported to oil refineries in the Lower 48 states. Since the pipeline began operations in 1977, more than 18 billion barrels of North Slope crude have been pumped. Currently the pipe is carrying about 450,000 barrels per day (less than a quarter of its peak figures from 1988).
The stretch of the Yukon River between the former gold-rush towns of Eagle and Circle is protected in the 2.5-million-acre Yukon–Charley Rivers National Preserve. In the Charley River watershed, a crystalline white-water stream flows out of the Yukon-Tanana uplands, allowing for excellent river running for expert rafters. The field office in Eagle and the NPS office in Fairbanks provide guidance to boaters. In great contrast to the Charley, the Yukon River is a powerful waterway, dark with mud and glacial silt. The only bridge built across it in Alaska carries the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The river surges deep, slow, and through this stretch, generally pretty flat, and to travel on it in a small boat is a humbling and magnificent experience. You can drive from Fairbanks to Eagle (via the Taylor Highway off the Alaska Highway) and to Circle (via the Steese Highway), and from either of these arrange for a ground-transportation shuttle back to your starting city at the end of your Yukon River trip. Weeklong float trips down the river from Eagle to Circle, 156 miles away, are also possible. There are several free first-come, first-served public cabins along the river, but no developed campgrounds or other visitor facilities within the preserve. Low-impact backcountry camping is permitted.
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