Chitina and Copper Center

I really enjoyed my time in Valdez. The drive there is beautiful, full of mountains. And the location of the town is spectacular, along a long and wide bay to the ocean and surrounded by mountains. It would be a great place to live in the summer (if you like out of the way locations). I think the winters would be long and harsh with the 300 inches of snow.

I visited the original location of the town. Everything was either moved to the new location, torn down or burned. There was an attempt to save some of the old town site but no one had the money to do so. I bet now they wish that the had.

All that is found in the old town site are these signs that show the building that had been at that location.
                                     

 

A picture of the long pier where you can fish. You also see some of the mountains that surround the town.

Ok, Kay, beat this with your chainsaw! This is 30 feet tall. The artist has 70 of these around the country.

 

Friday I hit the road again. I decided to leave the main highway and visit a couple of small, less visited towns. The first was Chitina.

 

Chitina came into being in 1910 when a very large pocket of copper was found down the valley. The native peoples had been using the copper for centuries but made the mistake of showing prospectors the location. The famed Kennecott Mine was the result. The prospectors were paid $275,000.00 for the land (a lot of money in 1910!). The mine produced $207 million worth of copper with an estimated profit of $100 million. The richest concentration of copper ever found.

 

The mining company built a railroad to Chitina to haul supplies in and the copper out. A depot was located in Chitina and the railroad supervisor lived in Chitina. The railroad alone cost $23 million to construct. The copper was pretty well mined out by the 1930s and the mine closed in 1939. Chitina nearly ceased to exist.

 

Chitina is very small. A few of the old buildings have been renovated and are in use. The only reason visitors go to Chitina now is that it is the small, less traveled back door into the Wrangell-St. Elias NP.

 

The Kennecott Mine is now owned by the NP and parts of it are being preserved. I didn't go that far because the paved road ends at Chitina and there is another 60 miles of reportedly very bad gravel road to travel. I was not that interested in seeing the mine. I just wanted to visit the town.

 

This building has been renovated and is in use.

 

Again, renovated and in use.

Sadly, the Emporium has not been maintained.

Remember above I mentioned that the train Supervisor lived in Chitina. This cabin was built for him in 1910. It is now owned by the National Park Service and this is the Visitor's Center for this back door entrance to the park. How do I get this job???

This is called the Ed Orr building, named after the train Supervisor.



The man holding MY job!

 

A bed and breakfast in a renovated building.

 

Main St Chitina. It is actually named "Main St".

 



The end of the paved road.

After Chitina I continued up the Richardson Hwy to Copper Center. Copper Center had once been on the main highway but the highway in this area was moved a little to the west and bypassed Copper Center.

Copper Center had been an early supply area for prospectors. It doesn't really have a downtown, it just stretches along the old highway.

 

To be honest, I did not take this picture of the Copper Center Roadhouse. I missed this building. I think I drove behind it but the road turned left and I did not see the front. I certainly would have stopped for this.

Copper Center doe have a great collection of log buildings. They were all over the place. You still see a lot of log cabins all over Alaska. Many are still in use. Many are falling apart. Log homes are very popular and you see new ones in all locations.

Finally on this day I visited the main Visitor's Center for the Wrangell-St. Elias NP. This is just outside Glennallen, Ak.This building is built along the famous Valdez Trail. The Valdez Trail was the first route to central Alaska and went all the way to Eagle (north of Chicken). Early on it appeared that Eagle might be the main city in the Alaskan interior. When gold was found in the Fairbanks area, the north end of the Valdez Trail was moved to Fairbanks and Eagle became mostly a ghost town.

 



 



                                                            The Visitor's Center.

 

I am now in Anchorage. I have a lot of house cleaning and laundry to do since I will have a visitor on Monday. I think I will try to have a guest "blogger" next week. It would be good to have a different viewpoint on things. So watch for Marne's posts next week. It will be good to have some company!