Colonel Carl Ben Eielson

This monument honors Carl Ben Eielson, one of Alaska's pioneer aviators. Born in North Dakota in eighteen ninety-seven, he came north and began flying out of Fairbanks in the early nineteen twenties. In nineteen twenty-four he carried the first airmail in Alaska, flying from Fairbanks to McGrath when most of the interior had no roads at all.

Four years later, with explorer Hubert Wilkins, he made the first airplane flight across the top of the world, from Alaska to Spitsbergen in Norway. In nineteen twenty-nine Eielson died in a crash off the coast of Siberia while trying to rescue passengers and cargo from an ice bound ship. The original monument here was dedicated in nineteen fifty-seven, destroyed when an aircraft crashed into the gate in nineteen sixty-three, then rebuilt.

The nearby Eielson Air Force Base also carries his name.