The Kennicott Mine was the richest producer of copper and silver in the world. The 70% pure copper was found here in 1900 and by 1907 the Alaska Syndicate of J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim family were making plans to mine the copper, build a mill to process the copper and silver out of the 5 mines in the mountain and build a railroad to transport the ore to the coast before it was shipped to Washington. The first train load of ore left the mine in 1911. When the mine was closed in 1938, they had produced 591,000 tons of copper and 9,000,000 ounces of silver! At the height of production the mine employed over 600 men who worked 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week with two holidays -- Christmas and Independence Day. To keep employees they paid well and had lots of amenities like a recreation hall, company store, hospital, school and fresh meat and dairy. Most men were single and could only stand the hard work for about 6 month. The more important employees like managers and engineers brought their families with them and had separate housing.
The area sat idle for a while, was used for mining the rock slides and then sold so some of the building left standing are owned by private individuals. In 1986 it was designated as a historic landmark and in 1998 Wrangell-St. Elias National Park acquired the remaining town properties.
To access this site we drove 93 miles, 33 miles paved and 60 miles on a rough, gravel road. It took 2 1/2 hours to get there. Then we had to park and walk across two foot bridges that span the Chitina River and walk 1/2 mile to reach the town of McCarthy. From there we rode the shuttle van 4.5 miles to Kennicott Mill Town. We found out later that if we wanted to drive across to McCarthy, we could pay a private individual $100 each ways to cross on his bridge!
When we crossed over the Copper River we saw very active salmon fishing including over 20 fish wheels. It was a long day, we didn't get back to the RV until after 8PM.
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