Long after mines shut down, Alaska outpost braves the elements
by Ruth A. Hill
MA JOHNSON'S - The restored Ma Johnson's Hotel in the frontier town of McCarthy, Alaska. The town sits within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, a wilderness area that's big even by Alaska standards. CNS Photo by Ruth Hill.
Where was I? Sleep's stupor clouded my thoughts as I gazed on the gigantic sunlit peaks framed in the window. A Victorian bird cage looked misplaced in the corner, and the iron bedstead beyond my toes looked unfamiliar.
The chorus of a dog barking that followed the blast assured me I wasn't fantasizing, so I rushed to peer at the dusty street below. No human or canine was in sight, and the Golden Saloon opposite Ma's was much quieter than it had been at midnight. So I felt no alarm. While showering in the hallway bath, I wondered: Is this just a normal August day in McCarthy? At the McCarthy Lodge across the street, I got my answers over breakfast.
"The gunshot was a bear warning: Don't come any closer to town," Chris the dishwasher told me.
Inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park - a wilderness area that's big even by Alaska standards - McCarthy passes for civilization - a base to sleep, eat and talk about the day's adventures over a wine or beer. There's a yearlong population of about 30 hardy souls, and talking with them about their wilderness lifestyle is one of the town's attractions. I found myself quizzing the ones I met about how they get supplies - especially in winter - when mail delivery comes once a week, weather permitting. The short answer: You learn to fend for yourself out here. If you choose to try living here, residents won't help you much for the first couple of years. If you make it, you'll have friends more loyal than elsewhere.
In mid-August, however, everything is focused on services for the tourists who find their way into town. During my two days in residence, I heard at least six European languages plus Hebrew spoken in the streets. One Brit I chatted with over a lodge dinner of carrot soup, Copper River red salmon and poached pear said the old mine was his big draw to the area.
ROCKY FALLS - One of the many streams that flow through Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. A copper boom formed McCarthy in 1915, until the mines shut down in 1938. CNS Photo by Red Bradley/ ATIA.
"I go all over the world hiking abandoned mining ruins," he said, "and this one's been on my list for a long time."
McCarthy was the old letting-off-steam town for miners who worked the nearby Kennecott mine, once the world's richest copper lode. By the '40s, the town was deserted, but it began to re-emerge in the '50s as an international tourism center. That's when Merle "Mud Hole" Smith, a bush pilot, and one couple ran McCarthy Lodge as a fly-in hunting and tourism stopover. Later, present owner Doug Miller's family added some facilities, including the Golden Saloon.
Ma Johnson's is Miller's reincarnation of a Victorian hotel, and the dining room of the lodge has the same dark-wood and velvet-with-tassels decor. But McCarthy's handful of wooden buildings and sidewalks still resembles a frontier movie set somebody forgot to shut down. In the middle of August these days, the town bustles with mountain climbers, backpackers and casual observers who want to sample at least a small slice of this amazing wilderness.
Few Americans have heard of Wrangell-St. Elias, the largest preserve in the national park system. At 13 million acres (the size of six Yellowstones), it is a mind-bending expanse of mountains, glaciers, ice falls and forests that occupy more land space than Vermont and New Hampshire combined. Four mountain ranges define this gargantuan mass of terrain, and nine of the tallest peaks in the United States are within its borders, led by Mount St. Elias at 18,008 feet. Lots of black and brown bear, caribou, sheep and goats make their home in the park, and the Copper River system produces many salmon lovers' most coveted entree. Part of WSE's mystique is its challenging accessibility, and one of the best things about going there is the getting there. I drove a car east about 200 miles over the scenic Glennallen Highway out of Anchorage to an airstrip at Chitina, population five or so. Along the way, it was easy to get distracted by all the river flats, timbered ridges, swamps and fjords that appeared over each rise in the road.
STILL STANDING - A view of mining buildings left from the long-defunct Kennecott mine in Alaska. Some of the buildings have been restored, although most are too unstable from the ravages of time. CNS Photo by Red Bradley/ATIA.
By pre-arrangement, a Wrangell Mountain Air six-seater plane collected me and a couple of others at the airstrip for a 30-minute fliteseeing transport over the Wrangell Mountains into McCarthy's airfield. Kelly, our pilot, talked with us through speakers attached to our headsets. He pointed out various mountain ranges, snow machine tracks left by reckless extreme-sporters on mountainsides prone to catastrophic avalanches, and the surviving red wooden buildings of the Kennecott mine scattered over the peaks above Kennicott Glacier (the mine was named after the glacier, however an error once inserted an "e" in the spelling, which remains). I marveled at how sturdy the nearly century-old buildings must be, especially the miner's bunkhouse that still clings to an unforgiving cliff side.
Park visitors who don't opt for an air shuttle continue on the road until it becomes the 58-mile washboard strip of one-lane gravel that follows the route of an old mining company railway bed. Most rental car agencies prohibit customers from subjecting their inventory to this stretch, and those that do admonish drivers to have extra tires, fuel and repair kits. The infamous McCarthy Road ends at a river a mile from town, and you must either walk the rest of the way or wait for a van shuttle to collect you and your duffel.
Miller's affable partner, Neil Darish, is one of McCarthy's great promoters, and he is a visitor's best source of information on activities. If you don't ride horses, backpack, fish or do glacier walking, there's always more dramatic fliteseeing and the mine tour, he said. I knew I'd get more fliteseeing on my return to Chitina, so I spent most of one day at the mine site, which I reached via one of the McCarthy-Kennecott van shuttles.
The year 1900 was when a couple of grizzled prospectors discovered copper exposed on Bonanza Peak beside Kennicott Glacier. Their discovery revealed 70% pure copper, some silver and a trace of gold. A syndicate from back east, including Morgans and Guggenheims, formed the Kennecott Copper Corp. in 1915. The company pumped production by building rails to the site, employed 600 people at its zenith and ultimately pulled about $200 million of copper out of the cliffs before the mine closed in 1938, a victim of declining demand. When the last train pulled away from the mine in 1938, Kennecott became a ghost town.
Wilderness elements had their way with the site until the National Park Service acquired most of the buildings and lands of Kennecott in 1998, 18 years after the creation of the park. Several of the buildings now under restoration are available for touring, but some are unstable. I joined a group led by a local guide into some of the safer parts of the buildings, and heard the stories about the days when the world was hungry for copper to build railroads and electrify American cities.
After the tour, I climbed up to the adjacent Kennicott Glacier Lodge, where some 25 rooms offer accommodations a notch above Ma's. I sat on the balcony, sipped a glass of Chardonnay and surveyed the expansive scene before me: old, red, wooden mining buildings to my right, a massive glacier field below the lodge, giant peaks all around, and some very blue sky above it all.
Back in McCarthy, I got ready to ride a van over to the airfield for my plane shuttle back to Chitina. That's when I got yet another long view of the old mine's bones scattered over the mountainside. On the drive back to Anchorage, I stopped at the Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge, the park region's upscale lodging address. In the dining room, some guests who had done their fly-over day to see Kennecott and McCarthy were animated about their day.
While hearing their report, I thought about all they were missing. Though you can reach a couple of Alaska's most famous recovering ghost towns from both McCarthy and the river lodge, those folks who were sleeping in the lap of luxury were missing at least one significant experience: a shotgun wake-up call beneath their windows.
IF YOU GO
For general Alaska travel information, call (800) 862-5275 or visit www.travelalaska.com. Contact (907) 554-4402 or www.mccarthylodge.com for McCarthy reservations and information. For information on Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, call (907) 822-5235 or visit www.nps.gov/wrst.
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