Opportunism comes with bells on at this Alaskan commuter town next to the Richardson Highway, south-east of the city of Fairbanks. What was once a nondescript homestead called Davis incorporated itself as North Pole in 1953, becoming an unlikely centre of Christmas-based commerce and tourism despite being 1,700 miles south of the real thing. Letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole” often wind up in this 2,000-strong community, and the streets have names like Santa Claus Lane and Kris Kringle Drive. Paul Brown, who currently manages Santa Claus House, the cavernous red-trimmed gift shop that evolved from a trading post set up by his wife’s grandparents, says living in this fantasia can lead to festive desensitisation: “For ordinary people, there’s more of a sense of emphasis on the holidays that is less so when you live in North Pole, just because we are living Christmas every day.”



Yulesploitation

Summer is actually peak tourism season in North Pole, driven by cruise-ship arrivals in Alaska and more forgiving weather. But there is a steady flow of visitors in winter, too, who also come to see the aurora borealis. Less manageable is the steadily increasing mountain of children’s letters to Santa that end up in North Pole - currently around 500,000 a year. Some terminate in the local post office, some at Santa Claus House; the Santa’s Mailbag programme was set up, originally by volunteers at nearby Eielson air force base, to make sure they didn’t go unanswered. Unfortunately, the non-profit company that inherited the programme is no longer functioning. Brown admits that there are too many letters to answer, but he insists that every one that arrives at Santa Claus House gets read.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest City Hall, North Pole. Photograph: Robert Lype/Getty Images

Living up to the Christmas fantasy can be tough, says one city councillor, who admits there is something of a Twin Peaks flipside to the candy-cane streetlights. “There used to be a huge oil refinery here, and there’s a big black market for drugs, but it’s kinda covered up by things like the candle-lighting ceremony or Winter on Ice.” The councillor’s name? Santa Claus. Really.

North Pole in numbers

-19C Average December temperature in the city

99705 Zipcode on Santa Claus’s “official” address

68.21% Republican portion of the vote in the 2016 elections. North Pole is the most Republican-leaning constituency in the Fairbanks area

3,359 Miles between North Pole and Rovaniemi, Lapland, its chief Yulesploitation rival. The competition is “playful”, says Brown: “We have very heavy US visitation, where Rovaniemi is more Euro-centric”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sun rises behind Santa Claus Lane. Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Rex/Shutterstock

History in 100 words

The 160-acre Davis homestead was only five years old in 1949 when it was purchased by the Dahl and Gaske Development Company. In an effort to attract a toy manufacturer to the area, it pushed through the 1953 name change that gift-wrapped the North Pole area’s fate. Deterred by transport costs from Alaska, no such company came – but Conrad B Miller’s highway store was already making good on the Xmas association, eventually becoming Santa Claus House, and the Millers a significant Alaskan political dynasty. Eielson air force base, to the south-east, and Fort Wainwright army base, to the north-west, boosted North Pole’s status as a “bedroom community” for the military, while an oil refinery linked to the trans-Alaskan pipeline added a further bauble to North Pole’s tree in 1977. While it was bought by the Koch brothers in 2004, a scandal involving groundwater contamination going back to its previous owners has helped force the refinery’s closure.

North Pole in sound and vision

The best Alaskan northern lights are between 65° and 70° north latitude. North Pole is at 64.75°, so it gets them sporadically. But there’s always YouTube.

The landscape around North Pole was a major source of inspiration for Bob Ross, the TV painter once stationed at Eielson who later became an unlikely internet celebrity.

Eco-fitting the city

In recent years, Fairbanks and North Pole have logged the worst counts of fine-particulate air pollution in the US: 139 micrograms per cubic metre at the 2015 peak, more than triple that of Los Angeles (38). This is because they are in a valley where temperature inversions trap smoke pollution from the fires everyone relies on to heat their houses in winter. Tougher regulations, including “burn bans” on wood and coal during alerts, have been put in place to curb rising respiratory illnesses. But Brown says the “hot-button” issue is more complicated than it appears. Most Alaskan natural gas is exported, leaving locals to choose between pricey heating oil and cheap but grimy wood and coal. “From a local standpoint, the new regulations are extremely controversial,” says Brown. “You tell us we can’t heat our homes with wood, but you don’t give us an alternative we can afford.”

Inside city hall

Councillor Claus, who changed his name from Thomas O’Connor in 2005 to help him advocate for child-safety issues, also campaigns on another issue: the cannabis industry. Alaska passed a law in 2014 allowing individual municipalities to permit commercial marijuana concerns; last year, conservative North Pole opted 158-98 to ban it. A blow for Santa Claus, who, as a cancer patient, advocates medical use of the drug. He believes it’s another instance of North Pole being in denial, this time of Alaska’s thriving black-market drugs economy: “People refuse to acknowledge there’s a $1m marijuana economy in their city, because after all the slogan of North Pole is: where the spirit of Christmas lives all year round.” Crucially, he estimates that the city is missing out on a sorely needed annual $50,000 tax windfall; Fairbanks, which has 18 cultivators (the highest in the state), currently rakes in $750,000 in yearly revenues. Claus hasn’t given up, and is planning a website floating a new local slogan: “North Pole: where Alaska’s homegrown spirit thrives all year round.”

What’s next for the city?

Brown says residents favour North Pole growing “slowly and carefully”, to preserve its small-town ambience: “Our idea of rush-hour is getting stuck behind five cars.” It may be out of their hands, though. The arrival of two squadrons of F-35 stealth jets at Eielson – part of the most expensive programme in US defence history, being deployed to strategically sensitive Alaska at a time of heightened tension with Russia – is estimated to bring 5,000 newcomers to the area soon. “The military’s not planning to build housing for them,” says Claus, “so that’s going to stimulate the economy in this area.” Which could bring a welcome diversification of North Pole’s industries portfolio – though it’ll mean a few more tyre treads churning up the winter wonderland.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A mural on the wall of Santa Claus House. Photograph: Alamy

Close zoom

This magnificent Jon Ronson piece from 2006, made to accompany a TV documentary sadly unavailable online, details the fallout from a thwarted school shooting in North Pole. Bone up on all the places milking the spirit of Christmas worldwide in this Smithsonian magazine breakdown. Meanwhile, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, operating since 1903, is Alaska’s oldest daily.

Do you live in North Pole? What key facts, figures and cultural highlights have we missed? Share your stories below



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