By SUZANNE DOWNING
March 18, 2026 – On Monday night, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Parks and Recreation Commission did what’s becoming all too common: it playacted at listening to the public, and then ignored them.
By a 7-1 vote, the commission approved a recommendation to rename Pioneer Park back to “Alaskaland” and spend $50,000 in taxpayer money on new signage, websites, and marketing. The justification was the need to be “more inclusive.” That sounds nice, but it didn’t match what actually happened in the room.
Public testimony was overwhelmingly against the rename. Speaker after speaker defended the name Pioneer Park, its history, and what it represents to Fairbanks. Only three people spoke in favor: the two Assembly members sponsoring the ordinance, Liz Reeves and Scott Crass, and one call-in participant.
Everyone else opposed it, many forcefully. And yet the commission pushed it through anyway.
They were not listening. This was all about checking a required box.
The commission leaned heavily on a 2021 Pioneer Park Master Plan written during the Covid era by Anchorage-based consultants at Bettisworth North. That plan labels the name “Pioneer Park” as “controversial” and “alienating,” using the familiar language of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion campaigns.
So a consultant report outweighed live public testimony, the legislative record, and decades of community understanding. Even more telling, earlier reports had recommended keeping the Pioneer Park name. Those reports were ignored.
The ordinance itself gets the history wrong — completely wrong. It claims the park “was originally established as the grounds for the Alaska ’67 Centennial Exposition.” That’s false.
The legislative record is clear. In 1961, the Alaska Legislature passed House Concurrent Resolution 20, authorizing the state to lease the land to the Pioneers of Alaska specifically for a historical park. The language is unmistakable: the land was to be used “for the development and maintenance of this land as a historical park” preserving Alaska’s history. In 1965, the Legislature created “Pioneer Memorial Park, Inc.” and required the site be used as a “pioneer park” for the preservation and display of historical items.
Here’s what you won’t find anywhere in those documents: the word “Alaskaland.” Not once. The park’s foundation was not a theme park concept but rather about honoring Alaska’s pioneers and preserving history.
And the contradictions don’t stop there. While officials talk about “inclusivity” and DEI-driven name changes, the borough has allowed actual Alaska Native cultural features inside Pioneer Park to fall into disrepair. The Native Village exhibit has been neglected, with parts deteriorating and even facing potential removal in past plans. The riverboat Nenana, which holds irreplaceable dioramas of Alaska Native village life, has been repeatedly closed, cutting off access to that history.
If inclusivity were truly the goal, those assets would be maintained and highlighted. Instead, they’ve been sidelined while officials focus on rebranding.
It’s also worth noting that Fairbanks already has a major facility dedicated to Alaska Native culture: the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center, funded by bed tax revenue and widely recognized. No one is questioning inclusivity there.
The commission ignored the clear voice of the public, ignored the legislative history, and ignored the park’s origins, even though those origins were shaped in part by the family of one of the ordinance sponsors. Instead, they deferred to a Covid-era consultant plan rooted in DEI language.
Now the full Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly will take this up with a 7-1 recommendation in hand.
Before they vote, they should do something simple: watch the hearing and read the actual laws from 1961 and 1965. Then ask themselves whether they are representing the public and the historical record, or advancing a narrative that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Pioneer Park earned its name through legislative action and the vision of the Pioneers of Alaska. That history is real. It shouldn’t be rewritten to satisfy a trend.
Suzanne Downing is the founder and editor of The Alaska Story, a longtime Alaskan, and former member (long lapsed) of Pioneers of Alaska.
24 thoughts on “Fairbanks commission ignores testimony, rewrites history”
Fairbanks has become Anchorage, or is it the other way around?
Fairbanks has a direct sewer line from the Lower 48 to the UAF. All of the sludge in the form of LGBTQ, wokeism, progressivism, teacher’s unions and climate activism ends up at the little state campus on the hill. From there, the strange incubation process takes place through radical left-wing professors and left-over turds from the 60’s who end up over-consuming pot and drink. They marry, raise little orphaned tattooed, nose-ringed, idiots. Then, they run for school board, the borough Assembly, and the city council, where they take their brainwashed little minds and attempt to divide the community with hate, contempt, and dissatisfaction. The public tries to throw them out of office but never quite does because the public is too busy working for a living to pay the exorbitant local taxes imposed on them. So, the community gets whammied by radical Marxism which prevails in an otherwise conservative
population. The process repeats itself until the sludge in the sewer line gets so full, they have to build another line. And the cycle repeats itself again. This is Fairbanks.
Complaining is not going to help you guys in Fairbanks. You guys got to work toward controlling the councils with your people on it.
Yep!
How do you control white radical leftists who hate America and everything it stands for? These miserable white people divide the community by employing race-baiting as the preferred tool to create division. Hence, you get councils and assemblies of lunatics leading the charge for land acknowledgements, Native preferences and appeasements, and tearing down established legacy institutions which are replaced with DEI clown shows.
These white hair older liberals have nothing else to do. While the majority of people in this state have lives with kids, work and social interactions, these people don’t have kids, (or they all have moved out) and their cats do provide them with anything else to do. This is why they have so much time on their hands. If you read the studies on this group of people, (old white haired ladies and some oil white hair men), they need to belong and this bonds them with each other.
Whether they understand what they are doing or not, they plug ahead because of the emptiness of their lives.
I’ve actually been studying these events for several decades. The older, liberal gray hairs (many with scrawny pony tails) are still trying to be influencers at local political meetings and through editorials in their local papers. Many are looking to relive their tumultuous pasts. Their ideologies remain rooted from their college days. They can’t seem to move on. Most are on pensions, lightly supplemented by SS checks. And they seem to have two things in common:
Intense envy because their own lives have been largely unsuccessful; and, the grouchiness of being alive with intense pain in their joints and soft tissues. They are on the final stretch of their lives and like a suicide bomber, they want to see how much damage they can inflict on persons who are far better positioned than themselves. The greediest generation, I call them.
These stuck-in-time old liberals are absolute poison to our communities, sowing the seeds of hate, division and back-racism.
Great comments posted. Told like it really is. The politics of ENVY.
No you are right, the meter has moved past the center line on the left side and Fairbanks Democrats are not wasting any time in cementing control has Anchorage is under Democrats control.
If Wasilla-Palmer-Kensi-Soldotna-Sterling areas were smarter they’d see they got five years to reprioritize, focus; unite, before they are fighting 50/50 that Fairbanks R’s and D’s fought neck n neck in 2020. Yes it five years ago they were fifty fifty split.
I said it five years ago Fairbanks Republicans need to control their councils but they were still protesting against the Democrats instead of working where their efforts matter most not who can make the most noise and hope for the best they intimidate the other side by screaming the loudest.
It’s not about the name it’s about control. Fairbanks Democrats are Staking territory markers like a conqueror planting their flag. Democrats change landmarks and street names.
Because Fairbanks Republicans, Christians, Conservatives aren’t united nor know how to work together if they even have work ethics.
Fairbanks Democrats aren’t fighting at 50/50 control against the Right. Thanks to Anchorage runaways and other parts of Alaska and USA. Democrats are controlling at 60/40 percent over the centerline.
Just like Anchorage your Fairbanks Republicans need to control your councils but changes in direction dont happen just because you control the council, change in direction happens when you are committed and diligently hard at something to change the trajectory.
How very Soviet of them
Marxists gonna marx!
Most of them can’t even walk up or down the stairs anymore. These old pot smoking lefties are the ones who like stirring up sh*t because they have nothing else to do but sit around and wait to die. Quicker the better, for the sake of our country.
You guys are talking about my favorite topics. History revisionism and propogandizing to the masses. My bro was an expert at distorting and twisting historical events by intention and feeding manure to undeveloped minds. He’s now pushing weeds on Birch Hill. My job is to fuel further discontent and create animosity wherever I can through vitriolic, partisan journalism. I guess I’m a journalist. I’m snorting from Alaska, looking for donations to get me to my next cocktail.
Dear Snorting From Alaska:
Your brother was my History professor at UAF. What a partisan hack. He hated everything conservative or Republican and wasn’t afraid to say it. He couldn’t lecture the truth because he didn’t know the truth. He was a brain-washed lefty himself. He showed us a video in class which was about himself talking about Fairbanks history, and he was lecturing from Birch Hill Cemetery. He said he was immortal in the video. LOL. How ironic that he is now fertilizer on Birch Hill.
You bros are a bunch of quackers.
How are your donations coming?
I remember the Coke brothers. Always performing a last lecture together at UAF. Real clowns, twitching and scratching their ears, looking perplexed to be on stage, trying to put cohesive sentences together. The Marxist brothers as we knew them, their audience was the left wing community of liberals, trying to erase the marijuana from the room while the Coke brothers stumbled around on stage imagining they were addressing a world audience. So funny to watch.
Now he’s begging for donations. And Snorting from Alaska. You rock, Suzanne.
They were twins. One still living. Both a bunch of hateful old men with nothing but a small following of very old university liberal democrats. Terrible speakers. One could write pretty well, but what a shriveled up old demon. Didn’t care for either of them.
HCR18 is the correct item from the 2nd legislure. HCR20 is a separate item on Parks and Recreation Development. What likely happened is Google ranked it higher as both HCR18/20 appear on the same paper pages in the historical SLA which was scanned/OCR.
The right link is:
https://www.akleg.gov/pdf/billfiles/SLAs/SLA%201961/HCR%2018%20SLA%201961.pdf
But you’ll note it also appears above HCR20, in it’s respective link:
https://www.akleg.gov/pdf/billfiles/SLAs/SLA%201961/HCR%2020%20SLA%201961.pdf
In the SLA PDFs, Legislation titles are at the top.
I have been a member of the Pioneers of Alaska for about 45 years and I spoke against the name change ordinance. What I think is absolutely stupid is the name change will not make the park “more inclusive” because there is not a plan to change anything inside the park that would supposedly draw the indigenous people back into the park. There is no plan to reactivate the Native Culture exhibit or have some native people show their work. “Alaskaland” is a true misnomer and not at all descriptive of what is inside the park. The park does not represent all of our vast state, it represents early Fairbanks with the old settler’s buildings and the Riverboat Nenana that served all of the villages/towns along the Yukon, and Tanana Rivers. It is the “Queen” of the park. There are two items on which to ride in the park, one is a child’s old fashion type merry go round with animals to ride and the other is the open car passenger train pulled by historic steam Engine #1 that circles the whole park.
Agree with Randy. Thank you for your comment.
Yes, Mr. Frank is from a REAL pioneer Fairbanks family. Not one of the nomadics who passed through occasionally on a moose hunt. Thanks for all of your family contributions towards the growth of Fairbanks.👍👍
Nobody wanted the stupid 33 million dollar dog pound, either. I’ll go ahead and explain something here. Almost all liberals in Fairbanks vote whenever they get a chance. Most conservatives in Fairbanks are just plain too lazy to follow the issues and vote. IF YOU DON’T VOTE, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN!!!!
Unfortunately, M.John has a point. What does it take to get the majority vote off their asses? Civil war?