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
