Kennecott Mine

Over 4th of July weekend, Monika, baby and I packed up the old frontier and headed down the Edgerton Highway to Chitina, McCarthy and finally Kennecott. Our objective was to see and learn about the Kennecott mining operation which worked to extract one of the world's largest copper deposits from about 1911 to 1938.

After driving a couple hundred miles on the Glen, through Glennallen, down to the Edgerton we arrived in the small town of Chitina, located at the confluence of the mighty Copper and the Chitina rivers. We were able to get in on their 4th of July celebration, very exciting!

After touring around Chitina, we headed across the Chitina river and began the trek to our destination over unpaved road. That night we camped by the Lakina river at about mile 40. 

Next day we drove the last few miles to where the road dead ends at the Kennicott river. From here one must cross a foot bridge to the bustling tourist town of McCarthy, and from there, either walk or take a shuttle the remaining 5 miles to Kennecott.

We opted to shuttle the 5 miles, to save our lungs from the clouds of dust kicked up by the shuttle behicles, and our legs for hiking around once we arrived. I should note that mountain biking is another favored alternative means of eliminating this section of trail.

The below video clip give you a glimpse of the grandeur of the mill.  

Funding for the mine came from J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim Family in 1903. From 1911-1938 $200 million in copper ore was processed. At it's peak, 300 people worked in the mill and two to three hundred in the outlying mines.

From 1907-1911 the Copper River and Northwestern Railway was built by the Kennecott Mining Company to move the copper ore from Kennecott 196 miles to the harbor town of Cordova AK. This operation employed thousands of people. 129 bridges were built at a cost of $2.5 million.

Mill power plant:

The generators were diesel fueled steam turbines manufactured in Erie PA. This plant also powered several, possibly all the outlying mines via a system of transmission lines. As an energy industry professional I was fascinated by this.

After touring the Mill, we hiked about 4 miles to the foot of Erie Mine, one of five outlying mines (Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother Lode and Glacier are the others). A Nokia Lumia 928 smart phone with Carl Zeiss optics picture through my Eagle Optics 8x42's was the best I could do for a glimpse of this precariously perched structure.

The trail paralleled Kennicott glacier. For those spelling nazis out there: the glacier (and river) were named after Robert Kennicott, a naturalist and explorer. During the incorporation process a misspelling was made, forever dubbing the mining operations as "Kennecott." The below video cannot convey the colossal size of this glacier, but it might help. 

 

On the drive out of Chitina, we stopped at Liberty falls.