Thank you, Patti, for this week’s lens-artists challenge, history. I live near the tiny town of Kennecott, Alaska. Over the years, I’ve become known as the local historian. I am currently working on a book about the area’s history, so I am focusing on local history for this week’s challenge.
Local history yes, but with national significance. In 1900, 2 prospectors, Clarence Warner and Tarantula Jack Smith, stumbled onto a mountain of copper. It was one of the richest concentrations of copper in the world.
The timing was excellent, too. The whole country was getting electrified, and copper was the miracle metal that made it happen.
A group of wealthy New York investors, known as the Alaska Syndicate, banded together to exploit the resource. They built a 14-story mill building and connected it to the mines with tramways. The mill building just may be the tallest wooden building in North America.
Their most major challenge, though, was to build a railroad 200 miles to the coast through some of the toughest terrain in the Territory.
Most folks said it couldn’t be done. Even after the railroad was completed, avalanches and floods would frequently take out the tracks, closing down the railway for weeks, even months, at a time. People called the Copper River & Northwestern Railway the “Can’t Run & Never Will”.
But the railway and the mines persevered. Kennecott became a model company town with a school, general store, recreation hall, and even a hospital. It was the biggest mine in Alaska and considered by most a great place to work and live.
The Kennecott Corporation used the wealth from the mines to purchase other mining properties. They grew to be the biggest copper mining corporation in the world.
When the ore ran out in 1938, they completely abandoned the town and the railway. Kennecott sat forgotten for many years.
People started to trickle back into the picturesque ghost town in the late 1970s. In 1998, the National Park Service purchased most of the major buildings and began a lengthy restoration process. Now Kennecott is the premier destination in our country’s largest national park, Wrangell-St. Elias.
Visitors come from all over the world to see the striking red and white buildings set against a backdrop of some of the most dramatic mountains and glaciers in North America. It is truly a photographer’s delight!
