A 14-story copper mill is rotting beautifully in south-central Alaska and you can walk through it

It’s red, it’s remote, and it’s real

Deep inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, a 14-story copper mill rises from a valley floor surrounded by glaciers and peaks.

Kennecott is an abandoned mining town in south-central Alaska, sitting inside the largest national park in the country.

The park covers 13.2 million acres, roughly the size of Yellowstone, Yosemite and Switzerland combined. Red-and-white buildings line up against ice and rock like they were dropped there by accident.

The National Park Service has managed the site since it became a National Historic Landmark in 1986, and the story of how it all got here starts with a color someone mistook for grass.

Two prospectors mistook copper ore for a grassy hillside

The Ahtna people have lived in the Copper River region for thousands of years.

They collected native copper from glacial streams and turned it into tools and trade goods long before outsiders showed up.

Then in the summer of 1900, prospectors Clarence Warner and Jack Smith spotted a green outcrop near the glacier. They thought it was grass.

It was copper ore, and it assayed at up to 70 percent pure chalcocite, among the richest deposits ever found.

By 1915, J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim family had backed the Kennecott Copper Corporation to develop the site.

One spelling note: “Kennecott” with an E means the mine and town, while “Kennicott” with an I refers to the glacier and natural landmarks, a mix-up that goes back to the company’s founding paperwork.

They built a 196-mile railroad through glacial wilderness

You can’t haul copper out of a glacier valley without a railroad, and building one here nearly broke the crews who tried. The line ran 196 miles from the port of Cordova into the mountains.

Forty-four of those miles were bridges and trestles, many of which washed out each spring and had to be rebuilt from scratch. Workers pushed through extreme cold, swollen rivers and shifting glacial ground.

Locals called the Copper River and Northwestern Railway the “Can’t Run and Never Will.” The first trainload of ore rolled toward Cordova in April 1911.

The tallest building for hundreds of miles processed copper

The 14-story timber-frame concentration mill is the heart of Kennecott, and when it went up, nothing else came close in height for hundreds of miles in any direction.

Ore traveled from mountaintop mines to the mill on aerial tramways stretching six miles. Inside, a gravity-fed system crushed and separated copper from rock as material moved down floor by floor.

The operation also pioneered an ammonia leaching process that recovered up to 98 percent of the copper. That deep red color on the outside came from paint originally meant for railroad cars.

Miners earned big wages but couldn’t buy a drink in town

At its peak, Kennecott ran three eight-hour shifts and employed 500 to 600 workers. The company town had a hospital, school, general store, recreation hall, dairy and even a tennis court.

But the company banned alcohol, gambling and rowdy behavior within town limits.

Miners earned higher wages than most operations in the lower 48, so the trade-off worked for a while.

When they wanted a night out, they traveled five miles south to McCarthy, a town with saloons and a social life that Kennecott didn’t allow.

Five mines pulled $200 million in copper from the mountains

Five mines fed the operation: Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother Lode, Erie and Glacier. Workers carved 77 miles of tunnels into the mountains to reach the ore.

The Bonanza Mine alone held some of the purest copper ever found anywhere in the world.

By the time everything shut down in 1938, Kennecott had produced 591,535 short tons of copper from over 4.5 million tons of ore. The total value hit about $200 million in 1938 dollars.

Adjusted for today, that comes to roughly $4 billion.

The last train carried everything out in 1938

By the late 1920s, the richest deposits were thinning out. Then the Great Depression drove copper prices down hard, and the operation couldn’t turn a profit.

The mines closed in 1938, and the last train carried the remaining workers and equipment out of the valley. For decades after that, the remote location kept the town mostly untouched.

Equipment sat where crews left it. Furnishings stayed in the buildings.

In 1998, the National Park Service acquired key structures and began stabilizing and restoring them.

Walk through the mill’s ore chutes and leaching tanks

St. Elias Alpine Guides holds the exclusive National Park Service concession to lead tours inside the mill.

The two-hour guided walk takes you through the multi-story structure, past original machinery, ore chutes and the ammonia leaching tanks where crews extracted nearly every trace of copper.

Several other buildings are open too, including bunkhouses, the power plant and the old train depot. You can also explore the town on your own with a free NPS walking map.

Safety signs remind you to stay on established trails and avoid contact with soil and tailings, which may contain heavy metals.

Hike three miles to walk on a glacier

The Root Glacier Trail starts near the Kennecott buildings and runs about three miles round trip to the glacier’s edge. Along the way, you get views of Mount Blackburn, Regal Mountain and Donoho Peak.

Local outfitters run guided glacier treks and provide crampons, helmets and ice axes. Once you’re on the ice, you’ll see blue pools, moulins, crevasses and formations shaped by melt and pressure.

Most half-day glacier hikes don’t require any prior experience, so you can show up and go.

Climb 3,400 feet to a mountaintop mine or fly over the ice

If you want more, the Jumbo Mine Trail climbs five miles and 3,400 feet to the remains of one of Kennecott’s mountaintop mines.

Flightseeing tours take you over the park’s peaks, glaciers and massive icefields in small planes. You can raft or packraft nearby rivers for a different angle on the backcountry.

In McCarthy, the old railroad depot now holds a small historical museum with photos, mining artifacts and a scale model of the town in its working days.

Biking the five-mile road between Kennecott and McCarthy is another solid way to cover ground.

McCarthy has a few dozen residents and live summer music

McCarthy sits five miles south of Kennecott with a year-round population of just a few dozen people. The town grew up during the mining era as the place where off-duty miners went to blow off steam.

Several original buildings still stand and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today you’ll find a handful of lodging options, a couple of restaurants and a general store.

In summer, a small but lively music scene brings in local and visiting bands, and you can hear them from just about anywhere in town.

A 60-mile gravel road and a footbridge get you there

Getting to Kennecott takes some effort, and that’s part of the draw.

You drive the 60-mile McCarthy Road, a gravel route from the town of Chitina that roughly follows the old railroad bed. It’s unpaved and narrow.

At the end, you park and walk across a pedestrian footbridge over the Kennicott River. From the bridge, it’s about a 20-minute walk to McCarthy, and shuttles run between McCarthy and Kennecott.

Small plane charters from nearby towns also fly into the McCarthy airstrip if you’d rather skip the road.

Explore Kennecott’s ghost town in Alaska

You can visit Kennecott inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, about 300 miles east of Anchorage. The site sits at the end of McCarthy Road, a 60-mile gravel drive from Chitina.

NPS interpretive exhibits and historic buildings are generally open Memorial Day through Labor Day. Guided mill tours, glacier hikes and flightseeing trips run during the summer season.

There’s no entrance fee for the park itself. Check the official website for current tour schedules and road conditions before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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