Birch Hill Cemetery -- Fairbanks, AK USA - Worldwide Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

Birch Hill Cemetery is located along Alaska State Highway 2, and can be accessed from City Lights Boulevard. The most eye-catching feature of this beautiful cemetery is its display of large yellow stars arranged in the Little Dipper and North Star pattern on the iconic Alaska state flag.

The day Blasterz visited, we estimate that over 7000 people are buried here, with room for many thousands more. The Birch Hill cemetery itself is broken up into several sections dedicated to different fraternal member organizations (Masons, Eagles, Pioneers of Alaska, just to name a few), veterans organizations, religious denominations, and a separate fenced Indigenous Athapaskan cemetery, which Blasterz did not photograph, not knowing if photography of Indigenous graves would be offensive to that culture.

Birch Hill cemetery is definitely worth a visit because it is a fascinating glimpse into interior Alaska with its dynamic mix of cultures from indigenous natives to all the various immigrant groups who came to Alaska from all over the world. Tens of thousands of people came here to work on the Alaska pipeline, build the Dalton Highway, or mine gold. Many are of the Russian Orthodox faith, and their numerous tombstones with their Orthodox crosses are scattered throughout the cemetery and the different sections.

There are too many homemade wooden tombstones here to waymark them all. Most are made from Birchwood, a historical Arctic tombstone material, one that is especially common in the Indigenous Athapascan cemetery.

City, Town, or Parish / State / Country: Fairbanks, North Star Borough, Alaska Approximate number of graves: 7000+ Cemetery Status: Active Cemetery Website: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
Post an original, un-copywrited picture of the Cemetery into this Waymark gallery, along with any observations about the cemetery.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   10/24/2022 Benchmark Blasterz visited it