18 Aug 2017
Squirrel Creek SP by Chitina
We dry camped at a state park called Squirrel Creek at mile marker 79 off of Richardson highway heading to Valdez. Our rig just barely fit in the rocky campground. The next morning, it was just a short drive of 30 miles to the town of Chitina.
We stopped at a Ranger Station in Chitna and the Ranger was very helpful with lot of historical information of the area and Wrangel St Elias national park.
She also let us borrow a cd of a mile by mile narration of the road to McCarthy. It was really helpful as we drove out in the middle of no where.
From Chitna, McCarthy is 60 miles over an unimproved dirt road , which is the remnant of the railroad track bed from the 1900’s. Whenever the road is graded, the Ranger said to be careful not to run over railroad spikes.
She also told us to look at the “chaos” along the river by the bridge, that was caused when a make shift earth dam broke down stream. This is a flat sandy/rocky river bed where Alaskans can use their fish wheels for subsistence fishing. When the fish are running, the folks bring their campers out on the river bank flats so they can be with the fish wheels 24/7. Well when the dam broke, many campers got marooned or swept away. Not the type of water front property we are interested in.
We continued the drive on a one and a half lane dirt road for the next 4 – 1/2 hours. Did I say it was only 60 miles? Yep, slow going, but we saw some beautiful scenery and a large railroad trestle bridge that was built in eight days. We are out here somewhere…….then there was a long one lane wooden deck bridge, that is 280 feet above the river, that the guard rails were install on it in the 1980s… holy cow.
The road dead ends at a river and a large parking lot. There is a bucket to throw $5 into for the parking fee and then you proceed across the pedestrian bridge. There is a vehicle bridge, that the folks of McCarthy use down river, but they don’t let the public use it. Once across the river, there is a shuttle bus to take you to town, about 1/2 mile away.
There is a small but very nice museum and a train car for some local artifacts.
McCarthy was built to support the copper mine operation which is 5 miles down the road. So McCarthy had what the owners of the mine did not want to have, such as a saloon and “other” businesses…..
Another shuttle will take you to the mine for $10 round trip. Heading to the mine you can see the Kennecott and Root glaciers. At first I thought it was all the tailings from the mine. Because there are mounds of rock everywhere. Well, under all that rock is ice. Back in 1900, the glacier was actually taller the Kennecott Mine buildings.
The Copper Mine was pretty cool. The iconic large 14 story red wooden mill was standing there. The ore was dug from the top of the mountain, there were 4 mines on top of the hill. The ore was placed into a suspended cable trolley, that held one ton of material, and it would be transported down to the top of 14 story mine building to be processed.
The mine stopped producing in the 1938, the owners just walked away and it remained vacant and in ruins.
In 1980 the Wrangel St. Elias Park and Preserve was established so now the mine can be preserved for future generations.