North Pole, Alaska

Fifteen miles from Fairbanks is the town of North Pole (population ~ 1700), “Where the Spirit of Christmas Lives Year Round”. (Despite the name, the city is about 1700 miles south of the Earth’s geographic North Pole.) The town has really capitalized on the Holiday theme, with streets named Claus Lane, St. Nicholas Drive, Snowman Lane, and Kris Kringle Drive. Street lights in the city are decorated in a candy cane motif, and many local businesses have similar decorations. The city's fire trucks and ambulances are all red, while the police cars are all green. Prior to Christmas each year, the USPS post office in North Pole receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa Claus, and thousands more from people wanting the town's postmark on their holiday greeting cards to their families. It advertises the zip code 99705 as the ZIP code of Santa.

No visit to North Pole would be complete without a stop at the world famous Santa Claus House. Santa and Mrs. Claus are year round residents here, and one can visit with them every day. In addition to the usual tourist oriented merchandise you would expect to see in a place like this, there is a section of the house where many of the thousands of letters sent to Santa are posted on the walls. To me, seeing these letters was the most worthwhile part of the visit. Reading what children from all over the world wrote to Santa was very poignant. Volunteers from the local senior center as well as the junior high and high schools attempt to answer as many letters as possible each year, but of course, an impossible task to respond to all of them. I’ve included a picture of the “wall of letters” – if you can enlarge it enough, you will be able to read some of the letters, too.