A historic 1938 hillside cemetery overlooking Fairbanks, resting place of Klondike-era pioneers, long associated with the 'White Lady' apparition and child ghosts and the site of documented local paranormal investigations.
Birch Hill, off Lazelle Road near the Steese Highway, Fairbanks, AK 99712
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public cemetery. No admission.
Access
Limited Access
Hillside cemetery with sloping, uneven ground and gravel roads; some sections steep
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1938 · Fairbanks Pioneer History · Klondike Gold Rush Connections · Territorial Alaska History
By the late 1930s, Fairbanks had outgrown its original Clay Street Cemetery, and the community sought a new burying ground. Antone 'Tony' Zimmerman, a well-known early Fairbanks miner who owned forty-seven acres at the base of Birch Hill fronting Lazelle Road and the Steese Highway, developed and donated land for the new cemetery. His motivation was partly personal: his first wife, Serina, had expressed a wish to be buried on the hill before her death in 1938, and Zimmerman interred her in a reinforced concrete crypt on a rocky outcropping overlooking Lazelle Road.
The Birch Hill Cemetery Association was formed to administer the grounds. Debate over the suitability of the hillside land slowed the transfer, but the association formally accepted the cemetery in 1939. The cemetery was organized into sections, including areas set aside for Alaska Natives, Catholics, and fraternal organizations such as the Eagles and the Masons.
Birch Hill became the resting place of many figures from Fairbanks's gold-rush and territorial history. Among them are Elam Harnish, the Klondike miner whose life inspired Jack London's novel 'Burning Daylight,' and Michael 'Mike' Stepovich, a Territorial Governor of Alaska. The Pioneers of Alaska have placed 149 markers throughout the grounds, and the cemetery was featured in the PBS documentary 'A Cemetery Special.'
Today Birch Hill remains an active cemetery on the hillside above the city, valued both as a historic site and as a quiet vantage point overlooking Fairbanks.
Sources
The signature legend of Birch Hill is the 'White Lady,' described as a young woman wearing a white dress in the fashion of the early 1900s, seen moving among the graves. Two child apparitions are also reported: a young girl and a full-bodied young boy whose clothing observers place in the early decades of the twentieth century. Witnesses driving along Chena Hot Springs Road below the hill have described glowing orbs hovering and drifting over the cemetery at night.
Unlike much of the Shadowlands-derived lore for Alaska, Birch Hill has drawn documented paranormal investigation. Jessie Desmond, a Fairbanks-born paranormal researcher and author profiled by the Anchorage Daily News and former Alaska State Director for the Mutual UFO Network, reports capturing her first electronic-voice-phenomenon recording — a clear female 'hello' — in the Birch Hill area, and in May 2012 worked the site with members of the Investigators of the Paranormal in Alaska, who say they captured additional EVPs and a photograph they interpret as an apparition.
One chronological note belongs with the folklore: the cemetery was not laid out until 1938, so the figures described as wearing 'early 1900s' or '1930s' clothing predate the burying ground itself. Whether the apparitions are imagined to have come from elsewhere on the hill, from the older Fairbanks community, or are simply the loose period-dressing common to ghost lore, the dating should be treated as part of the legend rather than as historical fact.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the hillside sections of Birch Hill, where Klondike miner Elam Harnish — the inspiration for Jack London's 'Burning Daylight' — and Territorial Governor Mike Stepovich are buried among 149 Pioneers of Alaska markers. The hill offers views over Fairbanks and a quiet tour through the city's gold-rush-era history.
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