This dataset includes maps of historical lake shorelines with derived lake areas in the southern portion of the Goldstream Valley and the surrounding landscape just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. Historical lake margins were mapped for 1949, 1967, 1985 using high-resolution (1-m) aerial photographs available through U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Explorer and for 2009 using high-resolution (2.5 m) SPOT satellite image mosaics. The study area was a 214 km2 area of Pleistocene-aged yedoma permafrost in the southern portion of the Goldstream Valley north of Fairbanks. An increasing number of thermokarst lakes and ponds, from 130 to 275 per year, were identified over the 1949 to 2009 study period. Anthropogenic lakes, formed by mining peat, gravel, and gold concentrated in the northwestern extent of Goldstream Valley, were excluded.