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Bobby Miller, owner of Circle Hot Springs and formerly of Miller Salvage, is an epic chapter of Fairbanks-Slavic history. Miller’s father, Frank Miller, was born near Ljubljana, Slovenia (later, Yugoslavia) in 1856 under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1903, 47, and married to Angela Merhar, Frank Miller decided to immigrate to the United States, seeking work in the Butte, Mont., mines. Once there with his family of six, he heard about opportunities in the thriving Fairbanks gold camp. In 1906, the family arrived by steamer on the banks of the Chena River.

Frank Miller bought the Miner’s Home Hotel and Restaurant on Garden Island (today, Lounsbury’s property.) However, in a diphtheria epidemic, Frank Miller’s wife and four of their six children died.

Frank Miller returned to Butte, where he married his 25-year-old sister-in-law, Mary Merhar, who was 26 years younger than him, and brought her to Fairbanks. In 1909-10, Frank Miller expanded, building saloons in the gold camps of Iditarod, and later in Chisana.

Very quickly, Frank Miller’s second family began arriving: Mary (Burglin Foran), Albina, Pauline, Max, Josephine, Henry (Rear Admiral Miller), Emma (Vasquez of Alaska Office Supply), and Bobby Miller in 1917, followed by his younger brother, Billy.

“My parents were pretty smart people,” Bobby Miller said recently from his Fairbanks home, “but they had no education.”

“With Prohibition, the old Miner’s Home had to close. Due to the expansion of the railroad in 1925, my father had to move the old saloon. He skidded it across the street to our land to build our three-story log home where the News-Miner parking lot is today.

 “We were one of the poorest families in Fairbanks,” Miller continued. “Our father did a lot of barking. I learned to do what he said the first time, ‘cause I didn’t want him telling me twice. He’d say, ‘When you work a job, don’t sit on your fanny.’”

As soon as school was out, Miller would run over to his brother Max’s auto/truck repair shop. When Miller was 10, he began repairing, washing and polishing cars, “so,” he grinned, “I could drive them!”

Every summer, Miller went out to Livengood where his brother, Max, was mining. Billy Root used to run buses out to the dredges in Goldstream, Fox, Gilmore and to Cleary and Chatanika. “I was too young to get a driver’s license;” Miller recalled, “I could barely see over the steering wheel of ‘my’ seven-passenger Studebaker, but I drove for Billy Root. When I was 14 or 15, I drove truck for the Alaska Road Commission.

“In 1934, Max began the first big trucking outfit in Fairbanks, General Transportation Company, where Alfred Ghezzi, later of Alaska Freight Lines, got his start. Ghezzi was the first in Alaska to get a diesel truck. I drove it all summer to Livengood, an arduous 15-hour trip.”

Miller graduated from high school in June 1935. The day after he graduated, he went to Pete Miscovich’s mine in Flat, where he was chosen to run the first diesel bulldozer in Alaska, purchased by Miscovich. Over the next seven years, Miller ran bulldozer for different mines.

“After I returned from World War II,” Miller recalled, “I developed lots of different businesses. The ‘old man’ (Ed) Stroecker at the (First National Bank of Fairbanks) would always loan me money without security or a payment plan. He, and later, his son, Bill, were an invaluable help to me.”

In 1946, Miller got into aviation. “Together, my brother and I had eight airplanes, beginning Northern Air Service. At that time, there were three major aviation companies servicing the Interior: Ray Petersen Flying Service in Bethel/Anchorage, (Frank) Pollock’s Northern Airways and our Northern Air Service. In 1946, we and five smaller companies merged into Northern Consolidated Airlines. I ran it out of Fairbanks.

“Just after the war,” he pointed out, “the military began selling airplanes. Pollock and I got a 14 passenger DC-2 for $50,000, a forerunner of the DC-3. We built up, quickly, getting 33 airplanes, and servicing the entire Yukon and Kuskokwim.”

In 1968, Northern Consolidated merged with Wien, and retained the older, established name of “Wien.”

“Together,” Miller pointed out, “we had all of Alaska. Over the years, however, mismanagement and bad investments caused Wien in the early 1980s to sell, ending my 45-year career in aviation.”

Miller returned to his beginnings, “Just after I got into planes, the military held their first surplus sale in Fairbanks: 109 pieces put up for bid. Fairbanks was so small I thought, ‘That pile will be enough to last Fairbanks as long as I live.’ (Wrong as hell.) — so I bid and got all 109 pieces of equipment almost at my asking price!”

In 1979, Miller wound up at Alyeska Pipeline’s big six-day auction. He spent $365,000 and got a few hundred tons of surplus. The next year, Miller bought Circle Hot Springs, first built by tourism entrepreneur Franklin Leach in 1930.

Over the years, Miller has had 13 businesses including Miller Machinery, Miller and Bentley Equipment, gold mining, Miller Salvage, Alaska Gold Sales and in 1977 at Alaskaland, “the only gold auction in the world.”  “One of the businesses I’ve never been in was saloons,” Miller said, “I don’t believe in them.”

“In 1981,” he recalled, “our three-story home, built from the old saloon was torn down, the land was sold then to the News-Miner.

“Since I was 5 years old, I have worked hard. For me, it wasn’t about the money but for the people of Alaska, the miners. They came first.”