Best Places to Shop in Fairbanks

The building now known as Co-op Plaza was once the Empress Theatre. Its construction in 1927 caused a furor because it was the town’s first structure to be built of reinforced concrete, and people believed that concrete would crumble in the cold Fairbanks winter. The theater could seat 670 people and opened to a packed house of 1,300 people on August 25, 1927. In 1961, the  More...

It’s Christmas year-round in North Pole, Alaska at the Santa Claus House, just 20 minutes from Fairbanks. The Santa Claus House is a frontier general store and post office turned holiday shop. The postal tradition lives on—official letters from Santa are postmarked from the North Pole and stamped with an official Santa seal. The store also has live reindeer, a coffee shop, holiday gift items, the world’s largest Santa statue and, in summer months and over holidays, Santa himself.