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About
Kennicott
The old mining town of Kennicott Alaska is an extraordinary
piece of history in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
The site is five miles up a gravel road from the town of McCarthy.
The impressive structures that remain at the mill site and
mines
represent an ambitious time of exploration and discovery in
Alaska.
Kennicott's
high grade copper ore, previously known and used by the region's
Ahtna native population, was among the nation's
richest deposits ever found in the twentieth century.
In
the summer of 1900, prospectors Clarence Warner and "Tarantula
Jack" Smith were exploring the east side of the
Kennicott Glacier. As they drew closer to
the limestone-greenstone contact, they could not miss
the magnificent green cliffs of copper perches on the
mountainside. Their discovery
was staked as the "Bonanza mine outcrop". A
young and ambitious mining engineer, Stephen Birch, later
purchased this
claim. Birch was financially backed by some of the most
influential families of the time, including the Morgans
and Guggenheims.
Originally called the Alaska Syndicate, it became the
Kennecott Copper Corporation in 1915. (The mining company
was named after
the Kennicott Glacier. It was misspelled as Kennecott,
with an "e" instead
of an "i".)
Along with the building of the mine and mill works, the
corporation controlled the entire transportation route.
It funded 196
miles of railroad from Kennicott to Cordova, and organized
a steamship
line that shipped the ore to the smelters in Tacoma,
Washington. From the first shipment of high grade copper
ore in 1911
to the final shipment in 1938, approximately $200 million
worth
of copper
traveled the Copper River & Northwestern Railway
to the port of Cordova. Today the McCarthy road follows
the old rail bed of this railroad. At its peak, the Kennicott
Copper Corporation employed
about 600 people: approximately 300 in the mill camp,
where the ore was processed, and 200-300 lived in the
mines up the
mountain.
Kennicott was a self-contained company town in the truest
sense of the word. It came complete with a hospital,
general store,
schoolhouse, baseball-field, skating rink, tennis court,
recreation hall and dairy.
Kennicott Tours
Access
to the town is by shuttle van out of McCarthy. The more
ambitious could also walk the old wagon trail which passes
by the old Kennicott cemetery. Tours are given of the
town of Kennicott including the old
mill building. No trip to McCarthy or Wrangell-St.
Elias National Park is complete without a tour of Kennicott.
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