Day Twenty-Five - Glennallen, AK

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Up at 5:30 so we could leave by 6:15. We have to meet our shuttle at 7:00 at the Visitor Center in town. Even Charlie thought it was too early. I finished getting everything together and ready then made some oatmeal for breakfast. I shouldn't have tried to do that at that time of the morning. I ran out of milk the other day (should have listened to Mike the last time we were at a grocery store) so I couldn't make my overnight oats. I looked at the container for directions and saw a microwave option. I put the water, oats and a pinch of salt in a microwave safe bowl, put a big cover over it so if I made a mess it wouldn't be all over the inside of the microwave. The directions said to nuke it 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. I split the difference and set it for 2:45. When the timer beeped I opened the door, lifted the cover and found my oatmeal all over the glass turntable plate! It didn't explode everywhere, it must have just oozed over the sides of the bowl. I cleaned up the mess and decided to try the stove top method. I got a pan out, measured the water and oats, added a pinch of salt and turned on the burner. I looked at the container for how long it should take and read "Bring water and salt to a boil, then add oats." Um, oh well. It still worked. Add some cinnamon, a little nutmeg a snack-sized box of raisins and a little sugar, mixed it together and enjoyed my warm oatmeal.

Once again, we had beautiful weather for our excursion. We loaded the backpacks, coolers and dogs into the truck and drove to meet the bus. Our driver, Hoss, arrived in a nondescript, white, 10-passenger van. He wore a Bluetooth microphone that hooked over one ear. The moment he spoke his first words to us I knew he was from the New England area. He was from Maine; most recently the Northwoods of Maine. He greeted each of us including the puppers. He is married and he and "the missus" have a miniature Australian Shepherd who often accompanies him on these transports. We got settled in the first two bench seats and he began telling us of the day ahead. He'd take us to the foot bridge that separates McCarthy and Kennecott from the rest of the world. From there we meet another driver who would take us the last five miles to the former mining town of Kennecott. We would have 5 1/2 hours to wander around Kennecott before we catch the bus back to the footbridge.

As he drove, Hoss talked a little about life in the wilderness of Alaska. From the tales he tells, it sounds like he has his fingers in a few income pies. He is a subsistence hunter which allows him to hunt a few animals out of season and in parts of the state illegal to the average hunter. Subsistence hunting is only granted to people of native descent. Hoss has Native blood but because he is from the New England area and not Alaska, I didn't think that would qualify him, but I guess it does. The missus is from the Czech Republic so she definitely didn't qualify. He is a bow hunter primarily and one of his sources of income is guided hunting and fishing trips. He and the missus have a few houses and cabins scattered in the area and the lower 48, some of which they rent out as part of his guide service.

He claims to have had over 190 jobs in his lifetime to date. After 9/11 he, like many others, joined the military. He spent the next 10 years serving in the Army. He asked the guys if either had been in the military. Dave said he had served his initial stint in the Navy, then joined the Army Reserve and retired from there. Hoss thanked him for his service and explained that as a way of giving back, he offers his hunting and fishing service to current and former military members free of charge.

Of all the scheduled stopping points between Glennallen and McCarthy, we only stopped in Copper Center to pick up more passengers. They were a family of five staying at a hotel that looked to be associated with one of the cruise lines. They had suitcases with them and would be staying the night in McCarthy. We stopped a second time at Liberty Falls State Recreation Site, a campground, to stretch our legs and use the facilities. There was a really pretty waterfall and everyone made their way to the bridge over the resulting creek to take pictures. Hoss warned us it would be a quick stop as he had a schedule he needed to follow. Break finished, we all piled back into the van. Everyone except one of the three sons. He had wandered off to get a better look at the waterfall or play in the stream or something, but Hoss wasn't a happy camper. He wasn't mad really, just a little irritated at the possibility of falling behind and making our connecting bus wait for us, and concerned because of the possibility of coming into contact with a bear. He would remind us again about this.

Farther down, when the Edgarton Highway became McCarthy Road, we lost the pavement and gained a thrill ride. Washboards and potholes from here until McCarthy. Not Hoss' first rodeo, he sped down the kidney busting road at nearly normal speeds, avoiding almost every spot where the road was missing a yard or two of dirt. He explained that if he were to drive slower we would feel every bump in the washboard worse than we already did. And it would take all day to get where we were going! He also joked that the company he drives for has several of these same vans and they're always in the shop. They must just rotate through them as they break and are repaired.

About an hour later we arrived at the Kuskulana Bridge. There was a little pullout just before the bridge. Perfect for taking pictures of this spectacular bridge, but from the safety of your vehicle. Parked at the pullout was a small van. An older gentleman got out with his camera, closed the door and the wife drove off in the van across the bridge. Hoss exclaimed, "She just left him there!" then rolled down the passenger window to talk to the man and ask if she would be coming back for him. I don't think the man's first language was English because his response didn't seem to grasp the potential danger of just standing there in the middle of a forest with a camera taking your attention off your surroundings. Hoss warned him about the bears and reluctantly left the gentleman. As it was, we had to wait in the area anyway. The bridge was a single lane and the wife was on her way back across. My guess is they wanted a picture of their van crossing the bridge and the only way to get that was for one of them to stand there with the camera. I guess the guy drew the short stick? In any case he didn't get eaten by a bear, she drove across and back, hopefully they got the shot they wanted and we were able to continue on our way. Before we did, though, Hoss asked if any of us wanted to walk across. We all declined because the bridge is really high above the river and it's not a narrow crossing. I didn't know until I started writing about this part (with the help of Google Maps) that the bridge has a catwalk below the car deck! Ummm ... yeah, no. I'll stay in the car, thank you. More fun facts via Google about the bridge: It was built in 1930 for the Copper River & Northwestern Railroad (ohhh, that explains the single lane and the catwalk); it spans 525 feet; and it is 238 feet above the river. The bridge deck is made of wood (not a Google fun fact, an Aileen fun fact). I noticed that many of the bridges have wood as the surface material instead of asphalt or other typical road building material. I wonder if it has to do with the remoteness or the harsh winters or maybe it's just because wood is easier to repair or replace than concrete or asphalt. Halfway across the river Hoss stopped the van so we could all get pictures. Most vans have only two windows that roll down, this one was no different. I don't like taking pictures through windows because whatever is inside the window is reflected and appears in the picture.

We finally arrived at the footbridge that would connect us with the second leg of our journey. We gathered our things and headed across the river to meet our next driver. Charlie wanted nothing to do with the metal grate bridge deck so I picked him up and carried him across to the safety of the dirt road on the other side. We climbed aboard a very small, former school bus. There were maybe 10 or 12 narrow seats. A few others hopped on and paid the $5 fare. Our fare was included in our shuttle reservation. Hoss joined us and stood in the doorway. He and Dan, the driver, chatted while we made the bumpy five mile drive up to the old mining town. We drove through tiny McCarthy and let Dan know we'd like to stop there on the way back. On our way up the former railroad path we passed a few people. Driver Dan made a comment about how people don't realize the five mile walk is not an easy walk and it's faster and easier to take one of the shuttles. Google and some basic math said there is an almost 800 foot gain in elevation from McCarthy to Kennecott. That's a slight, but steady incline. Not one I'd want to do on a warm day.

The bus came to a stop at the Kennecott Visitor Center. Since we wanted to spend some time in McCarthy, Dan said he'd meet us at the Visitor Center at 3:30; that would give us an hour to wander around and explore the other town. Our first stop in Kennecott would have been the Visitor Center, but it was closed. A sign outside the door advertised the times for ranger-led interpretive talks. There was a group of visitors seated on the deck on the side of the building listening to one such talk. My guess is the ranger who was detailing the history of the town, the mine and the people also ran the Visitor Center which it was why it was closed.

Kennecott was a copper mining town established in 1900 after a large body of the oxidized ore was found in the rugged mountains of southeast Alaska. The ore was worthless unless they could get it down off the mountain to market. J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim family joined the Havemayer family, a majority owner of the Bonanza claim, in funding the building of a railroad and develop the mine. In 1907 and continuing for the next four years, crews worked relentlessly building the railroad from the city of Cordova, on the coast, over rugged mountains, powerful rivers and moving glaciers to the mine site 196 miles away. Meanwhile back at the mine, a man named Stephen Birch, a mining engineer and the man who brought the Bonanza claim to the attention of the Havermayers, was developing the mining claims and building a town. He had a steamship disassembled in Valdez, hauled piece by piece over the mountains to be reassembled on the Copper River. The ship, along with dog sleds and horses, hauled equipment to the area so miners could get started extracting the ore and builders could erect the buildings and assemble the machinery needed to process it. Ten days after the railroad reached Kennecott, the first train left with sacks of copper worth $250,000. The copper was shipped from Cordova to the smelter 1,355 miles away in Tacoma, WA (the aroma of Tacoma). In 1938 the last of the mines served by the Kennecott mill closed and the workers and other townspeople moved on. The 13.2 million acres surrounding Kennecott were established as the Wrangell-St. Elias (ee-LIE-us) National Park and Preserve in 1980. The town sat virtually abandoned until it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The National Parks Service bought the land and most of the buildings in 1998 (several had already been purchased by private individuals) and began stabilizing and restoring the buildings that aren't too far gone.

From the Visitor Center we walked through the old town exploring the buildings we could access. The General Store was stocked with items of the day from canned and dry goods to fabric, clothing, and household goods. It wasn't a large store, just one big room. There was a display of breakfast cereals including Shredded Wheat. I used to eat one of those big biscuits for breakfast when I was little with milk and lots of sugar. I remember they came two in a paper pouch and sharing a pouch with my dad.

The Post Office was in the same building, but to the left of the General Store. It was about half the size of the store and was much like a typical Post Office today. There were pigeonhole mailboxes in the lobby and a window for the Postmaster or clerk. Behind the window was room enough for a few bags of mail which would have been sorted into the P.O. boxes. Behind the General Store and Post Office was a warehouse for everything the miners and mill workers would need to keep the equipment running.

Across from the store and Post Office was the train depot. The town was only accessible by train and there are still railroad ties under the dirt of the now roadway. In fact, both Hoss and Dan have to be aware of the possibility of a random spike or nail puncturing a tire while they transport visitors to and from the towns. The depot was a small building, two-thirds of which was the waiting area, one-third was for the window clerk and storage for items being shipped to and from Kennecott.

Behind the depot were two bunkhouses and the hospital. The nearer, two-story bunkhouse was one of the buildings NPS will let nature take its course. The three-story bunkhouse behind it looked to be stabilized and at least had a fresh coat of dark red and crisp white paint. It was locked so we weren't able to take a look around. The hospital across the creek from the bunkhouses was beyond repair. Having Charlie with us, we didn't do any in-depth exploring of the ruins because we didn't want him to get hurt or ingest something that might make him sick.

From the depot and store, the road crossed the National Creek and served the industrial part of town. The wood plank decked bridge had two sets of rails. I learned there was a turntable in McCarthy that would turn the engine around so it could push the rail cars up the hill the rest of the way to the mill site for loading. I've been thinking about how that might happen and I think I've finally figured it out: Somewhere in Kennecott was a switch. The engine would disconnect from the cars, switch to the other track, back down the hill to the turntable in McCarthy, turn around, (somewhere there would have to be another switch involved, this time in McCarthy), get back on the main line, go backward up the hill, connect to the formerly last car and back the train the rest of the way to the mill. This way the train would be facing the right direction to start the trip down to the port at Cordova. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

On the right side of the road, up the hill a bit was the General Manager's office. It was open, but again, because we had Charlie, we didn't venture up to check it out. The next building on the right was the 14-story Concentration Mill for processing high grade ore. Up to 1,200 tons of ore was processed every day using a series of crushers, sorters and gravity. The final product was loaded into burlap sacks and stacked on the flatbed rail cars. There was scaffolding outside the bottom floor with workers in the process of restoring the heart of the town. Visitors could take a guided tour of the mill, but it was two hours and we didn't have the time. We also had the dogs and I doubt they would have been allowed inside the building (no hard hats small enough).

Across from the mill was the building where further processing took place. When the high grade ore was depleted, lower quality copper ore required a different procedure for extraction. In this building ammonia and heat were used to leach the copper out of the gravel sized ore. When the ore quality declined further, pine or eucalyptus oil and air were used to float the copper out of the finely ground, flour-sized bits. The residual copper collected from these two means were bagged and sent to Tacoma as well. Kennecott was able to get up to 98% of the copper out of the ore. It was difficult to make out the operation in the jumbled mess of "stuff" inside the building. It looked as if this might have been a dumping ground of artifacts when the process of reclamation began.

Next on our tour we headed a couple doors down to the Power Plant; the building that kept Kennecott running. Inside were two giant diesel generators, a steam turbine and a waterwheel that provided electricity and steam heat to the homes, factories and other buildings of the town as well as the mines themselves several miles up the mountain. The machinery in the building was massive! It was much easier to see how things fit and worked together. I could imagine this would have been a good place to work in the winter, but not so much in the summer. The building was so big there was enough open space for the builders to store the reclaimed and new lumber and whatever other reclaimed and new materials that would be needed for the restoration of the town's surviving buildings.

Beyond the Power Plant were cottages where some of the men and their families lived. Many of these are now privately owned, but there was one that was open to the public. The cottage was very small, had a living room with a very ornate hot water radiator, two bedrooms, a kitchen, what appeared to be a bath room (tub, no toilet) and a small room off the back kind of like a mud room. There was a small bench inside this room and a door to the deck off the back of the tiny house overlooking what would have been the massive Kennicott Glacier (not a misspelling). One of the bedrooms had information about the cottages and a few artifacts of what might have been in the house or maybe in that room. One of the artifacts was very much like one my grandma had and is still in the basement of the house I grew up in - a treadle Singer sewing machine.

The well-traveled road ended at the last cottage, but a trail continued. We had crossed paths with Teri and Dave and they told us there was a small hill farther up the trail with a great view of the glacier. We continued walking and found the hill. The path up was rocky and not easily navigated, but I managed to make it to the top without falling and breaking me or my camera and was rewarded with a fantastic view of the Kennicott Glacier in the distance ahead, and a little bit of the Root Glacier to the right. The moonscape directly in front was not leftovers from the mining and processing of the ore, but the moraine, or glacial till, left when the glaciers receded. It looked like a landscape of tiny mountains that I'm sure were not so tiny.

Making our way back through town, we met up once again with Teri and Dave and walked back to the Visitor Center to wait for Driver Dan and his bus. As we waited I was glad I had taken a picture of the giant oxidized Kennecott National Historic Landmark sign when we arrived. It was now blocked by several shuttle vans.

Dan arrived right on time. We boarded and a few others with their dogs joined us for the drive down to McCarthy. We made a quick stop at the McCarthy Airport. He wanted to show us how their mail and Amazon packages arrive. Yes, they get Amazon out there. It arrives via bush plane twice every week. It's all loaded and sorted at the unofficial Post Office there at the air strip.

The village of McCarthy grew as a result of the lack of certain services not available in Kennecott. Kennecott was a company town, McCarthy was where employees went to blow off steam. In McCarthy alcohol, gambling and prostitution were not prohibited. The town grew and eventually included a gymnasium, hospital and school in addition to the bar and brothel. In 1921 a patron of the brothel located in Ma Johnson's Hotel accidentally started a fire that burned an entire block of the town. Folks from McCarthy, Kennecott, the mines, and towns farther down the mountain sent money to help the Johnsons rebuild their hotel. When the ore in the nearby mines ran out, the population of McCarthy, like Kennecott, fell to nearly zero.

The buildings that remained were privately owned and looked much like they did back in the town's heyday. Walking through town we met a few of the free range dogs. These were not strays, but dogs belonging to the residents and workers. They were all very friendly and Charlie exchanged sniffs with a couple of them. We stopped by the Visitor Center located in the former train depot, unfortunately the hours vary and we were there outside of the day's hours. There was a rail car adjacent to the Visitor Center that was open and had artifacts from the early 1900s town. The town was very small and we didn't explore much beyond the main road. There were several cars from the late 1920s and 1930s parked outside some of the residences and businesses. I don't know how many of them actually ran, but they looked like they might. The period cars outnumbered the modern cars; I think I saw one, maybe two modern cars compared with the five old vehicles and one dilapidated buckboard wagon of the day.

Our hour in McCarthy came to a close and Dan picked us up once again to take us down to the footbridge. I carried Charlie across the bridge again and we loaded our gear and tired bodies into the van. Hoss informed us there would be others joining us for the ride back down so Charlie and I rode shotgun while Mike, Teri and Dave grabbed the first couple benches. A family with a couple teen boys sat in the back while a couple about our age filled the remaining two seats. On the way up Hoss had told us about a little place that made the best ice cream. It was made with honey instead of sugar. We thought it sounded delicious, so on our way back I asked if he would mind stopping so we could get some. He was happy to stop. Mike, Dave and a couple of the others got out and lined up to place their orders. The flavor choices were few, two to be exact: Vanilla and strawberry. I asked Mike to get a strawberry for me, he got a vanilla for himself The older lady in the shop the size of a mocha stand scooped our cones. The ice cream was so soft Mike had to bring mine to me while she got his ready. Mmmmmm! The flavor was delicious and the honey was a sweet aftertaste. We were about to continue down the road when the parents of the teenagers call out that one of their sons hasn't made it back to the van. We looked to the ice cream shop and there he was waiting patiently for his cone! He turned and smiled and gave us a look like, "Were you going to leave me?!?" A minute later we really were ready to go.

During the ride back down the old-railroad-turned-vehicle-suspension-testing-track Charlie got comfy on my lap, closed his eyes and rested. I don't think he actually fell asleep, but he was very relaxed. At one point he was draped across my legs. Hoss made a few comments about how well-behaved he was and how he'd like a dog like him to keep his mini-Aussie in line. We stopped at one of the remaining trestles for a quick photo op before moving on. We crossed back over the Kuskulaha bridge and this time I was able to take a couple pictures without the glare or reflection of a window.

As we made our way back down the mountain we were on the lookout for wildlife. With every body of water, we looked for moose. Hoss told us ponds and lakes with water lilies was what we should be looking for; moose like the sweet grass that grows beneath the lily pads. We were also on the lookout for bighorn sheep. At one point I thought I saw one. I caught a white shape against the green and brown backdrop. The van came to a stop, I pointed to the white shape, but it turned out to be a sheep rock. Another bit of local folklore or wisdom passed to us was a bit of weather prognostication, similar to Punxsutawney Phil; when the flower blossoms reach the tip of the fireweed, winter is six weeks away. I wonder if that's true everywhere fireweed grows.

We stopped twice to let the other passengers off. When we arrived at the family's destination some of us had forgotten they were even in the van. They were so quiet in the back of the van. Mike thought the boys may have fallen asleep! The other couple was let off at a stop closer to the end of the line. One more stop and we were back at the Glennallen Visitor Center. One last scratch behind the ears of the pups and handshakes between the humans and we parted ways with another unique character on our tour.

It was a long day, but very fun with amazing views and interesting history. Thanks for sticking with me through this extremely long post and the even longer wait.

We'll talk again soon. I promise the next installment won't take as long.

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