My watch shows 10:48 p.m. — perfect tee time. Long shadows are creeping over the grass. White mist is rising from the ground. The boreal forest beyond the fence stands pitch-black and silent. Untamed taiga woods — habitat for wolves and bears, moose and raven — begin right past the mesh.

All songbirds are long sleeping soundly. But the Fairbanks Golf & Country Club in this central Alaska city awakes to a bustle and hustle right now, in the late evening hours as the midnight sun is glistening in the sky, bright and clear.

Magnificent golfing weather! In the height of summer, the Fairbanks Golf Club is one of the few in the United States to stay open until midnight without artificial lighting. Here, the last tee time for the 9-hole course starts at 11 p.m.

Teeing off around midnight, a golfer casts a long shadow.

Just a few years ago, the club was even open around the clock. Now, there are only a couple of minutes left to get to the tee-off. So I shoulder my heavy bag and start marching toward the course.

I am not the only one taking advantage of the convenience of a tee-off time that doesn’t conflict with office hours. Tour buses from a cruise line come to a screeching halt in front of the club house. Out climb excited tourists on shore leave.


Golf clubs clatter, electric carts jolt over bumpy pathways. Laughing, chatting and shouts of jubilation echo over the course as one of the happy players manages to drive his ball across the water hazard first and directly into hole number 6.

A grinning Eskimo caricature sporting snow boots with a golf club in his gloved hands is the mascot of the Fairbanks club that appropriately opened its 9-hole course to the public on the summer solstice of June 21, 1946. “Farthest North” is printed in bold letters above the smiling Inuit cartoon character.

And my car GPS unit shows an impressive latitude of 64º 52' north in the club’s parking lot. This is as far north as Siberia or the southern tip of Greenland.

However, if you unfold a city map of Fairbanks (population about 30,000), you will quickly see that the North Star Golf Club — offering 9- or 18-hole courses — is actually located a finger’s width even farther north (64º 53') and can rightfully claim to be “America’s northernmost” golf course.