Talk:College, Alaska

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id like a detailed history section. College is very old. i could have a short history section at least saying when this settlement began or some kind of foundation date. also i wanted to point out that the 1940 population was actually the 1939 census becasue alaska was a US territory then and its census was not 1940 like the rest of the country it was 1939 but thats the population. regardless a more lenthly history section would be cool. it could detail events like when important buildings were contructed things like that. 76.244.155.36 (talk) 14:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Not sure you're going to get it, because there are plenty of trollseditors who believe that articles such as this should only serve as a dumping ground for census data. Of course, that census data found in this article and many other simliar articles is now 15 years old, but that doesn't appear to matter. Purging organic matter so that the census data stands out may not have occurred here, but I've seen it in numerous other places. Nonetheless, a quick overview: the area where the Ester Road (today's College Road) passed by near the foot of College Hill was originally homesteaded by John Sexton Shanly, who was the college's first graduate. He fell into financial default on the property; it was later obtained by Charles E. Bunnell, who platted a townsite in 1939. The N/S streets were named for three mountains close together in the Alaska Range: Deborah, Hess and Hayes. The E/W streets were named for the college's first three graduates. Thomas Street is named for a young woman who would go on to better reknown as Margaret Murie. People started settling along or near the Chena River by the 1950s, but these neighborhoods would have been considered rural at the time. Jim Binkley built a number of boats in his yard on Halvorson Road, which started what is now the Riverboat Discovery tour business. The townsite was likely a sleepy little place until the 1960s and 1970s, when Bob Bettisworth and his in-laws the Hering family developed quite a bit of real estate surrounding the college and also operated various businesses in the area, such the College Inn grocery/liquor store. University Avenue was widened to its present four lanes, with a bridge constructed across the Chena, in 1964. Prior to the bridge, College residents had to travel through to and through Fairbanks to get to Fairbanks International Airport a short distance away, the closest bridge being at Cushman Street in downtown Fairbanks (the first Peger Road bridge was built in 1969, but that didn't help for access to College until the construction of the Johansen Expressway decades later). College Road was widened to its present four lanes the following year. The University Fire Department was founded in 1964, and before long began providing service to neighborhoods surrounding the campus. The existence of fire protection and the formation of a water/sewer utility for College (Bettisworth and another businessman who also died recently, George Gordon, were influential in its founding) allowed for College to develop with a density simliar to what Fairbanks enjoyed. The mid-to-late 1980s saw the construction of the Campus Corner strip mall and other similar developments lining Geist Road. Around this same time, the College post office moved out of Shanly Subdivision to its current home at the corner of Geist and Fairbanks Street. With this move, it largely ceased to be thought of as the College post office and was more often thought of as a branch of the Fairbanks post office. Not sure there's much more to say beyond that. While the community continues to grow, most folks would be hard pressed to differentiate it from Fairbanks. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a passage in History of Fairbanks, Alaska which alludes to that. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 21:54, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

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