Today we were going to explore the town of Kennecott or, more specifically, the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark.
From the website:
In June of 1998, the National Park Service acquired many of the significant buildings and lands of the historic mining town of Kennecott. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and designated as a National Historic Landmark since 1986, Kennecott is considered the best remaining example of early 20th Century copper mining.
We still hadn't decided if we were going to take the Kennecott Mill Town Tour offered exclusively by St. Elias Alpine Guides located right next to the Wrangell - St. Elias National Park Visitor Center in Kennecott or just do the Self Guided Walking Tour.
What we had decided was that we would walk into McCarthy, have breakfast, take the shuttle up to Kennecott, check out the park's ranger talks, and perhaps take one of the guided tours offered at 9:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m. Between July 1 and August 15 they add an 11:30 a.m. tour as well.
It was a leisurely plan, so we definitely weren't taking the 9:30 a.m. tour. Eventually, we grabbed our day backpacks, walked across the footbridge, and started up the road to McCarthy.
On the way, we met some people coming down the hill. They stopped us and asked if we wanted to buy their shuttle tickets. They bought round-trip tickets for the shuttle, but decided to hike back from Kennecott along the Wagon Road Trail and had tickets they didn't use and weren't going to use.
As I mentioned in yesterday's Journal post, the shuttle tickets to go the 4.5 miles from McCarthy to Kennecott are $10 each (one way) or two for $15 (which they call their round-trip ticket). Always looking to save a buck, we bought their tickets at a little bit of a discount. Of course, on the face of the ticket it says "Not Transferable", but the van drivers would have no idea and why would they care anyway? They already got their money.
We stopped and ordered some breakfast at the Roadside Potatohead (aka "The Potato"). They had a nice bacon and eggs breakfast that they garnished with strawberries and blueberries, fruits we can have in small quantities.
Then we poked around town a bit checking out the museum first. We're not museum people, in general, but we will peruse on occasion. Then we forget everything we saw and look it up online if we're interested enough. The information age, the internet, and Google have spoiled us.
This photo is a portion of the "Artifact Fence", created by an artist whose vision in putting it together was beyond my comprehension, as most artists visions are.
We then checked out the general store. Their selection was pretty decent considering how remote this place is. That's also where the only ATM in town is located, and today it had money and was functioning. We noticed the store and a few other businesses in McCarthy were up for sale.
Next, we just waited at the shuttle station for the next van to Kennecott. We caught the one at noon.
After the slow ride on the rough road, we went into the park Visitors Center to ask about their ranger talks. There were three today, but we'd already missed one, and the next one was at 2:00. But the ranger said we could walk up the road to the restored "General Store and Post Office", and we could watch the movie about the mine. We grabbed a map for the Self Guided Walking Tour on our way out.
The movie was about 12 minutes and did a fantastic job of summarizing the history of the mine and the milling process for the copper. I've included it here.
Then we watched the longer movie that provided an overview of the entire Wrangell - St. Elias National Park.
After the movies, I was fine with not doing the guided tour, but I left it up to Linda. She leaned toward doing the tour, so we walked back to St. Elias Alpine Guides and signed up for the 1:30 tour .... right at 1:30. It's $28/person for two to two and a half hours.
There were quite a few people, so they divided us into two groups of eight people each. Our group hung out on the back deck with our guide, Brooke, while the other group went on ahead.
The deck overlooked Kennecott Glacier with a view of the Fireweed Mountains .
As we learned yesterday, Brooke reiterated that the Fireweed Mountains would not have been visible from here in the early 1900s due to the height of the glacier. Later we saw a photo from 1911 that confirmed this.
I think a misconception is that the biggest building here is the Kennecott Mine.
That 14-story building is actually the mill where the copper ore was processed. The mines themselves were up in the mountains and the ore had to be transported to the mill. There were five mines connected by 70 miles of tunnels and the ore was transported by an aerial tram system to the mill.
About 300 people worked in the mill and town and another 200 - 300 worked in the mines.
The park's website offers this PDF called "The Kennecott Story", and there is a lot more information online about how this mine came to exist.
Our tour made brief stops at various important buildings such as The Kennicott Glacier Lodge (privately owned) a replica of where some of the management lived.
Brooke gave us little tidbits about the Recreation Hall, the School, ....
the West Bunkhouse for miners, ....
and the Post Office and General Store.
Crossing the bridge toward the mill, .....
we stopped to look at National Creek, the lifeblood of the town and the copper processing. Water was so precious, they developed a way to recycle it in the milling and sorting process.
The buildings above are the National Creek Bunkhouse (foreground right), the East Bunkhouse behind it, and the Hospital on the left side of the creek (which was, by the way, the home of the first X-ray machine in Alaska).
There was a clear hierarchy among the workers and in the housing. Miners had to be solo while middle and upper management could have their families here. Miners stayed in the bunkhouses while management stayed in what is now the lodge or in private cottages, and the higher up on the mountain your cottage was, the higher your status in the mining company.
The miners had about a fifth of their wages (around $1 a day) deducted for room and board, and eight cents a day deducted for healthcare.
Women that were not part of management families also had to be solo, and worked as nurses, teachers, or secretaries. Clearly the men outnumbered the women, and dances at the Recreation Hall weren't always enough entertainment for the miners, and being a company town, alcohol and gambling weren't allowed.
So, McCarthy down the hill grew by catering to the entertainment desires, vices, and more prurient interests of the miners.
Now, it turned out the copper here was some of the purest and most valuable ever found (up to an unheard of 70%), but it was worthless unless it could be transported out. So, a $23 million dollar railroad was built along the Copper River Valley from the port town of Cordova on the Prince William Sound to Kennecott. That was a huge, risky investment in the first decade of the 1900s.
The McCarthy Road that we came in on yesterday is basically the route of the old railroad and wooden trestle remnants are visible along the road.
We started uphill and briefly went into the General Manager's Office ....
to view wide view photos of the town during its heyday.
We continued uphill and stopped to compare the weight and color of a rock with copper to some limestone.
It was a bit of a trudge continuing up the hill to the back side of the mill building.
Remnants of the tramway that transported buckets filled with ore are still present.
Here's a link to some vintage video: Aerial Tramway - Kennecott Mine
We entered on the eleventh floor of the 14-story building, and access to this structure is, in my opinion, the main reason to spring for the cost of the guided tour as you can't access it on your own.
It's a rickety looking thing, but walkways with rails and stairways (often narrow and steep with some low overhangs) provide a safe passageway.
However, hardhats were required.
Here are a couple of views from the top.
This is looking out to what is and was called "Silk Stocking Row" where the highest of management had homes with fantastic views far away from the incredible noise of the mill operation.
The tour of the mill building was basically a floor-by-floor walk-through of the process of separating the copper from the "waste rock" as we saw in the park video earlier.
The amount of engineering, thought in the machinery used, the construction, and flow of processes was simply amazing. And when a better process came along, they just added on to the building or otherwise by-passed the old process.
Our group included a mining engineer, and he said many of the processes are still used today, some with improved technology, but also some that aren't much different at all.
Clearly, had OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) been in existence at the time, this mine would not have been operating. Imagining working in that environment 363 days a year (it closed only for Christmas and Fourth of July) is mind-blowing.
Interestingly, the majority of the workforce were foreign born, with many of them being Scandinavian.
After the mill, we went into the Leaching Plant where the process was refined even further by adding ammonia to what was left of the finest rock/copper material to continue to separate the copper.
Beyond leaching there was yet another process that allowed the company to get its extraction rate up to 95%.
We ended our tour in the Power Plant.
The Power Plant used two diesel generators, a steam turbine and a Pelton waterwheel to provide power to the town and the mines miles up into the mountains. It was a pretty impressive operation.
In the end, in the 30 years of operation from 1908 - 1938, the Kennecott Copper Corporation produced $200 million worth of copper and ended up with a $100 million profit .... that's around $2 billion in today's dollars. That leveraged them into being able to invest in mines all over the world.
But once the Kennecott mine ceased to be profitable, they quit cold turkey, loaded up the last train, and gave employees extremely short notice to gather their belongings and board the train out.
Seeing the inner workings of the mill and having the guide for two and a half hours seemed to be worth the $28 price. Seeing the buildings and equipment and how they got the ore from the mines to the mill and then processed it added to the experience. It's a really amazing part of Alaska history that is often overlooked due to the stories of the gold rush.
After the tour, we chatted with Brooke and got to know her a little better as we walked back to St. Elias Alpine Guides. She's young and new to this tour, but she did a pretty good job, especially with the added pressure of having a mining engineer in our group.
After the tour, we split a meal at the highly recommended Meatza Wagon food truck in Kennecott.
The young ladies running it were fun, and the food was good. But a storm was moving in, so we didn't have time to dilly dally.
We hustled over to the shuttle stop and waited for the 4:30 shuttle.
The shuttle eventually dropped us off at the footbridge, and we just made it to the Jeep as the rain began. We pretty much hunkered down in the back with our kindles until the storm passed, and called it an early night.
Tomorrow, we booked a pack-rafting tour with the other tour company in town. Mainly, it's just something different as we wanted to see what this relatively new "sport" is all about. Stay tuned to see how that goes.
Can you tell us how expensive food is in Alaska?
Posted by: Lisa L Carr | Saturday, June 29, 2019 at 11:10 PM