Copper Mine and Dad to the Rescue: McCarthy, Alaska

I had heard on YouTube that the McCarthy, Alaska, area was a must see, so we decided we must go see it. It did not disappoint. It is located smack in the middle of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve which is an absolutely beautiful area of glacier covered high peaks including an active volcano. It is amazing how interconnected the world is. I had no idea this part of the world had a major tie to Utah too.

We didn’t want to take our rigs all the way down the McCarthy road for only one night. That road can be rough and if it is raining a little bit treacherous. It is gravel most of the way. So, we saved diesel and camped at the beginning of the road, at the Copper River Campground near Chitina, Alaska. This was a great campground and it was FREE. A few campsites in the very middle of the campground were good for large rigs like ours.

When we first arrived on a Thursday afternoon, we were almost totally alone, but by time we left on Saturday morning, the place was pretty packed. It was dipnet season on the Copper River and so Alaskans arrived with their huge nets and coolers to fill with salmon. If you decide to stay here, arrive during the week and check if it is dipnet season.

There is a quote from an Alaskan in the MilePost guide we are using that says, “People who come to Alaska think that bears are the danger when really it is the creeks and rivers.” There was evidence of this around us at the Copper River right by where we were camping. Apparently the river had flooded just a few weeks earlier due to a ton of rain. We saw four RVs that had not made it out, but instead were taken by the river. The river is both dangerous and beautiful and a means of survival for many of the native families who fish with fish wheels when the salmon are running. It was actually the natives who invented dipnet fishing but they now use the fish wheels to catch fish.

It took us about two hours in the jeep to drive to McCarthy. Just a few miles in we were delighted by seeing a momma black bear and her cub eating berries on the right side of the road, As we approached in the Jeep they crossed the road in front of us. We were not quick enough on the camera so all we captured was the back end of the cub as it left the road. Can you see it?

This was a very interesting drive. Along the way we stopped at a wayside and walked underneath an old railroad bridge. It was falling apart because it was not used since the mining operations in the area closed in the late 1930s. This road was very drivable in the RVs going slow. It is gravel so it is a bit rough. But, we determined that at some future time we will come back to McCarthy and drive “The Beast” (that’s the name for our motorhome and the jeep is “Beauty”) in and camp right at McCarthy. That will allow us to explore the area more fully. It is an amazing place.

You can drive to McCarthy. However, it will cost you over $500. There is a bridge for cars, but it is owned by a private party and they charge in the neighborhood of $500 to use the bridge. So we, like everyone else that visits McCarthy, parked and walked across on the foot bridge. Then you take a shuttle bus to McCarthy and then on to the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark.

So is it Kennicott or Kennecott? Well, the answer is it depends. All of the natural items like the Kennicott Glacier, the valley and the river are spelt with an “i”. The mine and Kennecott Copper Corporation are spelled with an “e”. They don’t seem to know why they spelled it differently. We Utahns recognize this name because after pulling over $200-300M out of this copper mine in the Kennicott area, the corporation which was owned by the Havemeyer, Guggenheim and J.P. Morgan families, purchased the Bingham Copper Mine west of Salt Lake City and another mine in Chile. So in essence, Alaska funded the purchase and further development of the Kennecott Copper Mine in Bingham, Utah. I had no idea of this connection to our “neck of the woods” back home.

The Ahtna people who are the native Alaskans in this area had found copper in the Wrangell Mountains for many generations. In 1900, prospectors Clarence Warner and “Tarantula” Jack Smith discovered a rich copper deposit on top of Bonanza Ridge. They looked up and the side of the mountain appeared to be green from the copper right at the surface. This ended up being on of the richest copper mines in the world and at one point was the leading producer of copper. The mine closed in 1938, due to the copper running out and dropping copper prices. At that time, there were over 100 buildings in the Kennecott mine and mill camps.

The operation here was pretty amazing. The actual mines were high above on the mountain sides. They used aerial trams to transport the copper from the mine camps located high above down to the mill located at the base of the mountain. The miners lived on the mountain all year round in the mining camps and the mining and milling operations both continued throughout the year including the frigid winters (temperatures as low as 60 below zero). This was a hardy group of people. Most miners only lasted one season. They would come and make excellent money compared to the wages they could get in the lower 48 and then return home.

The Kennecott Corporation built the railroad to this remote location over one winter in order to get the ore from this really rich deposit out to the world’s markets. They also pioneered new mining techniques of industrial scale ammonia leaching and a flotation process that lead to being able to extract 98% of the copper from the ore they processed. This made the operation very profitable.

After it was closed, the mine went through many different stages of private mining, tourism and homesteading, but the mine fell derelict. In 1998, it was added to the National Park Service system as a historic landmark. They have been slowly shoring up the buildings and restoring them.

There is also great food available at the Kennecott Mines National Historic Site. We had lunch at a food truck called The Meatza Wagon. It was absolutely excellent food. Mike had a meatball sandwich he said was the best meatball sandwich he had ever had. I had carnitas and they were good and the black beans that came with them were excellent. Pretty amazing to have great food in the middle of nowhere Alaska.

The evening after we returned from McCarthy and Kennecott, Dad was able to do a good deed. A couple with a truck (2-wheel drive) and camper and towing a trailer had tried to go down onto the shore of the river. He got super stuck in the loose sand. My awesome father-in-law risked getting stuck himself in his nice new 4×4 Dodge Ram and went to help him out. The other thing that is so cool about dad is that he had a huge long chain to pull him out with. Dad was able to pull around him on another road that led to the shore and then have his truck totally clear of the sand–hook up to him and pull him out. Isn’t that so cool–my father-in-law is the best. The fellow came to thank dad afterwards and he said, “they say you can’t fix stupid, but you just did.”

Dad is always prepared and has what is needed. That is one of the things I love about him. We teased him a lot about all the stuff he brought with him, but a lot of it has come in handy. He even pulled out his chainsaw to cut up some wood for us that night because we had to have more s’mores. I wish I had gotten a picture of him cutting up the wood with his chainsaw.

Other interesting things to see and explore here is the natural wonders. The Kennicott and Root glaciers combine to create a really interesting and very large moraine. It looks like mining tailings I have seen in other mining areas and some people mistake it for that, but is actually an active glacier underneath all that gravel and dirt. We have seen this in other glaciers and it never ceases to amaze me when I see it. The layer of dirt and gravel on top of the glacier is actually not very thick. It is also amazing how you see the glacier flowing down from the mountain. It appears to be almost straight up and down. You can hike to the Root Glacier although we did not and you can take a guided hike trip overnight into the back country on the glaciers and explore ice caves here as well.  This was a really amazing and interesting visit. We paid for four hours parking at the river parking lot, but we ended up staying much longer. It is a full day to really see the mine itself and we didn’t even try to hike to the Root Glacier. We definitely want to come back here and spend more time in the area.