Kennecott

Kennecott was a copper mine. The ore was discovered in 1900 in the form of green cliffs above the Kennecott Glacier that were 70% pure chalcocite, apparently one of the most pure deposits ever found. The site was extremely costly to develop and involved building a long railroad and even hauling steamships piece by piece over the mountains. It required the combined resources of the Guggenheim family, J.P. Morgan, and the Havemayer family to form what was called the Alaska Syndicate. They ended up mining $200 million dollars worth of copper, which allowed expansion across the globe making the company one of the largest minerals companies in the world.



It's a 4 mile shuttle ride from McCarthy to the mine site and it's not a free ride. Any hiking you would want to do in the area would require that shuttle ride. There are numerous trails from there, but since it was raining and very cloudy we were content to stay at the main complex, which had plenty of stuff to look at. The mine was closed in 1938 so suddenly that it became almost an instant ghost town full of relics. Most of it has been picked clean over the years. The park service began restoring the site several years ago, so that now many buildings are not accessible, and some of the ones that are require paying a fee to enter. I got really angry momentarily when i realized, after taking the shuttle, that i had forgotten to pack my camera, because i had camoflauged it in a plastic bag to keep it dry. So we had to use Maree's camera all day. It worked out allright though.




This was the steam engine power plant building. It is being restored, and it seemed fitting that the construction workers were blasting Rage Against the Machine on a hidden but somehow great sounding loud stereo.


The main structure was a 13 story wooden building


This was the top floor, and the first stop for the ore. It looks largely unsafe, but if you paid $20 per person some local guy would take you a little bit farther into it

I don't know if we were allowed to go there, but one of the most interesting buildings was one of the bunkhouses. The bottom floor was completely filled up with rocks. The building was right next to a mountain stream at the base of a gorge, and it looked like the stream had a habit of violently flooding. Over time i guess numerous floods had broken through one of the walls and deposited tons of rocks inside the building. The building was warped and leaning, but i figured it must have a good foundation now with all those rocks holding it in place.


The bunkhouse






The culprit creek looked so innocent...


Maree is on the middle landing between the first and second floors


The second floor was covered in a few inches of dirt and mud


It looked like the hillside had crumbled somewhat near the back of the building and even second floor rooms near that end were filled with rubble


There was some kind of Silent Hill thing going on in this room


Stay out of Room 33....


On the third floor you could actually see the wood floor!

The pictures below are of the gorge above the bunkhouse. In the second one you can see the "old" bridge. The very first picture on this post is above the waterfall and shows a collapsed retaining wall of some sort. The bushes to the right of the stream bank were actually on an island in the stream bed and there was an old dry overgrown canal running through it. I'm guessing they had a lot of problems controlling the rocks and sediment that came down this little stream, which would explain why the bunkhouse is now half buried.





Above the site were numerous cabins on an old road called Silk Stocking Row. It was where women and families lived. We were surprised to find that people still live in them, and some of them were even for sale.






Next time: Thompson Pass

The Town of McCarthy

McCarthy was founded as a homestead in 1906. It served as the supply and recreation stop for the entire Kennicott mining district. Now it caters to tourists who show up at the National Park. Some of you may have heard about the crazy ass Pilgrim family in the news in the last year or two. McCarthy is where they caused some of their trouble, even setting up camp in the middle of town. When reading about that, I couldn't imagine what a mess that actually must have been until I visited and could see for myself just how small the town was.






I hate saying it but I guess you have to say McCarthy is one of those towns that is like stepping back in time, sort of. I just felt like I was in the present around a bunch of old buildings for the most part. Ma Johnsons Hotel was very cool though; it fit the saying much better. Everything in the hotel was supposed to be from the original buildings. The bedframes, mirrors, all the decor, the single sheet of pressed tin that made up part of the ceiling, the wavy glass around the check-in counter, the books and toys, and black lacquered wood floor. I think it would definitely be cool to stay there for a night.






McCarthy is really just one block of dirt road next to a river. When we were there it was practically deserted except for the dogs all over the place. The saloon was pretty cool too, again because of all the relics. They actually had good food and beer and music at prices that were not astronomical, considering their remoteness.


A local neighorhood


This is Diesels house, obviously


This was a very narrow footbridge that crossed the river to the local party spot.






Also of note was the cemetery. Maree had been to McCarthy years ago, and I would never have noticed the faded board nailed to a tree indicating the direction through the woods to get there. Inside were many unmarked and faded graves, but the air was chock full of living dead zombie mosquitoes that had an unbelievable thirst for human blood, so we were never able to stop moving and had to run away.







We were lucky to get there on a sunny evening. We had enough time to look at everything, grab some food, then head back to our campground before it got too dark (by dark I mean the sun was slightly below the horizon for few hours). I was looking forward to the next day, which was supposed to be great weather. Unfortunately, and typical for this summer, it started raining at 2 am and continued to rain for the next 14 hours. It was also that night that we realized that Maree's tent was no longer waterproof. I woke up at 4 in the morning staring at my reflection in a pool of water right next to my face. We had brought a tarp to put over the tent, but the mosquitoes were so bad that we decided to skip it and just jump in and escape. It was the first time I've had to use one of those mosquito head nets. Those things suck. You can't see anything and you can't eat either unless you take it halfway off, which means you'll get bitten. But waking up in the water was one of those things where I was too tired to do much about it, so by morning our bags were pretty wet and we realized we were definitely not camping again on that vacation. There was no point in staying another night anyway, since I wasn't going to be doing any of my planned hiking. So we let our breakfast cook in the rain while we sat in the car to escape the still relentless waves of mosquitoes, and then we geared up and headed back across the bridge to catch a shuttle to Kennicott.




All the spots that appear to be dirt on the lense were actually mosiquitoes in front of Maree's face that were caught in the light from the flash.


Next time: Kennecott