July 05, 2012
Guests always love seeing the ‘ghost’ town of McCarthy and learning the history of the precipitously perched Kennecott copper mines and mill -- and this week was no exception. About twenty minutes into our flight we see what appears to be a narrow, rust-colored ribbon of road, the first sign of ‘civilization’ after leaving the Lodge. It’s the former rail-bed of the North Western Copper River Railroad, the NWCR RR – “the Never Will, Can’t Run Railroad”, the naysayers called it a hundred years ago, when the route was hacked out of the wilderness to link the Kennecott mines and mill with the outside world.
On July 4, 1900, two years after Klondike Gold Rush, a dozen hardy prospectors pushed through to the Kennicott Valley, the source, according to an earlier report, of the copper jewelry and cookware used by the women of the Ahtna Tribe. The prospectors hit paydirt in the form of rich, exposed veins of green malachite and blue azurite in the rock overlooking the massive Kennicott Glacier. It would prove to be the largest concentration of high grade copper ever found.
Two towns were established, neighbors so close that it’s hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Kennicott was the ‘company’ town, with administrative offices and residences for mine owners and managers. There was a boarding house for miners where the beds never got cold since miners slept in shifts (the mine operated around the clock), a mess hall, a multi-storied mill, an assay house and a ‘company’ store where imprudent miners, who earned only around $5.25 a day, might spend too much of their wages and even become indebted to the Company. A one room schoolhouse accommodated a dozen children of varying ages by day. At night immigrant miners crowded in to learn how to speak English.
Five hundred men who worked six days a week in harsh conditions and twelve ‘proper’ women – a teacher, the nurses in the infirmary, cooking staff perhaps and wives of management – called Kennicott home at any given time. McCarthy was a ‘getaway’ for the men on their brief half day a week off – brothels and bars and the chance to hear news from the outside world.
There was one way into McCarthy and Kennicott – by train. When the mines closed for good in 1938, Kennicott was shut down and McCarthy became a ghost town overnight. The Company’s farewell message was brief and abrupt – "Anyone wanting out must get out immediately. When the last train leaves in two weeks, there will never be another one."
Salt shakers remained on kitchen tables, half eaten loaves of bread, surrounded by crumbs, were left on cutting boards. Dishes were abandoned in sinks and clothes left flapping on lines in the rush to get out while it was still possible.
A number of historic buildings remain and it’s easy to imagine what it took to survive in that place and time. McCarthy these days is enjoying a ‘renaissance’ of sorts. Several cafe's and gift shops now occupy restored structures and twenty five or so residents now call McCarthy home year-round.
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