Kenny Lake Mercantile & RV Park
8:30AM. Temp: 55°F
This area is all part of the largest national park in the States: Wrangell-St Elias NP.
Today we're heading to McCarthy Alaska road the beginning of Is the confluence of the Copper and the Chitna rivers. Please note the road sign!
The road rises quickly to breathtaking vistas but the road quickly turns to rough gravel road of wash outs and potholes. The area appears to be prime for moose country but no moose. At the end of the 60 miles there is a parking lot with a pay station and visitors information. From there there's a footbridge and a mile hike to McCarthy.
There Is a Courtesy bus from the footbridge to town but if we wait for that bus we'll miss the connecting bus out to the Kennecott mine which is another 5 to 6 miles. Of course with all the rain the road that we have to hike up is muddy muddy so it's just a wonderful walk wonderful walk at least it has stopped raining.
McCarthy is not the mining town.McCarthy is the entertainment town for the miners. This is where the workers came to party. McCarthy is not a Company town. KENNECOT is the mine. Adry town no family or girl friend were allowed. So McCarthy grew to provide living for family and provide "entertainment" for the miners.
We got to McCarthy just in time to get on the bus to Kennecott. When we got there we signed up for the tour of the operation of the mine and walk through all of the buildings in the processing of the ore. We had just enough time to have lunch at a food truck before the the tour started. Of course we late for the start for the tour and we had to catch up with the tour that had already started. The mine processing/sorting mechanism is a series of buildings that go up about 300' on the side of the mountain so the tour started by us hiking up the side of the mountain. The guide had several stops just for people to be able to catch their breath. At the top we started down through the buildings that were the or came in and went from floor to floor going through crushers and sorting screens to eventually by the bottom have removed all the copper which is what this mine was looking for.
The mine grossed $200M in its years of operation with a profit of $100M.
The road to McCarthy was the original railroad bed. The Company rail was the only way in or out of the mining area.
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