If you are interested in classic cars from 1898 and 1938 on place you should consider visiting is the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum.
Work began on the museum three years ago when Cerny, 53, acquired from the Bentley Land Trust a 100-acre plot adjacent to the Wedgewood Resort grounds. Part of the that land is being used for a wildlife sanctuary and an interpretive center. Cerny also saw it as the perfect place to create an automotive museum and satisfy his lifelong passion of early automotive history. The 30,000-square-foot museum is now part of the Fountainhead Hotels at Wedgewood Resort.
“I’m very interested in early automotive engineering. Everybody had their own ideas of how the automobile was going to emerge and what was going to be the most successful method of propulsion, tires, battery technologies, ignition technologies. The competition between steam cars, electric cars and internal combustion cars was very undecided from 1890s to 1910 as to which technology would emerge,” he said. “And this happened to be the period of Fairbanks’ founding so the emergence of the automobile here very early on is exciting. There were two steam cars here within the first year of an automobile coming to Fairbanks,” Cerny said. “So we had both steam and internal combustion cars in the first year of the automobile in Fairbanks. It’s a wonderful story.”
The first car off the boat in Fairbanks was a 1908 50 HP Pope Toledo, soon followed by two White Steamer Model G Custom Touring cars, he said.
The museum does contain a 1907 White Steamer, an “identical” model to the 1908 that was one of the earliest cars in Fairbanks, though Cerny said he will likely replace it with the originals, which he’s located in Stockton, Cali.
“This (current owner) was here with his family in the 1970s and spotted them in the banks of the Chena (River),” Cerny said. “He pulled them out and took them back to California where he’s restored one and the other is just for parts. While he acknowledges they would be nice to be back in Fairbanks, he’s not willing to sell one.”
via newsminer.com • Blast from the past.
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