Sights in Wrangell–St Elias National Park
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Kennicott
In 1900 miners 'Tarantula Jack' Smith and Clarence Warner reconnoitered Kennicott Glacier's east side until they arrived at a creek and found traces of copper. They named the creek Bonanza, and was it ever - the entire mountainside turned out to hold some of the richest copper deposits ever uncovered. In the Lower 48, mines were digging up ore that contained 2% copper. Here, the veins would average almost 13%, while some contained as much as 70%.
Eventually, a group of investors bought the existing stakes and formed the Kennecott Copper Corporation, named when a clerical worker misspelled Kennicott (which is why, nowadays, the town is spelled with an 'e' while the river, …
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Kuskulana River Bridge
At Mile 17 of McCarthy Rd sits the one-lane, 525ft-long Kuskulana River Bridge, long known as 'the biggest thrill on the road to McCarthy.' Built in 1910, this historic railroad span is a vertigo-inducing 238ft above the bottom of the gorge. Though the state has added guard rails and new planks and thus taken some of the thrill out of the crossing, the view of the steep-sided canyon and rushing river from the bridge is awesome, and well worth the time to park at one end and walk back across it.
After rattling through another 43 miles of scrubby brush and thick forest - with few good mountain vistas and not many diversions en route - the road ends at the Kennicott River. I…
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Chitina
The end of Edgerton Hwy is 10 miles beyond Liberty Falls State Recreation Site, at little Chitina, the last place you can purchase gas. There's a grocery store here too, and a café, an art gallery and a ranger station. Backpackers can camp along the 3-mile road south to O'Brien Creek or beside Town Lake.
At Chitina, the McCarthy Rd begins, auspiciously enough, by passing through a single-lane notch blasted through a granite outcrop. From here 60 miles eastward you'll be tracing the abandoned Copper River & Northwest Railroad bed that was used to transport copper from the mines to Cordova. Though your around US$40-a-day rental car can usually travel this stretch during th…
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McCarthy
Most local services are in the hamlet of McCarthy, an erstwhile ghost town so funky and cool you'll want to haunt the place yourself. Facing the Kennicott Glacier's terminal moraine and just a stone's throw from the river, the tiny community is a car-free idyll, where the handful of gravel roads wind past rotting cabins and lovingly restored boomtown-era buildings.
Alas, in the past few years the place has been 'discovered,' but the summer population still hits only about 200, and just a quarter stick it out for the winter.
Once you've crossed the Kennicott River on the footbridge, follow the road across another footbridge and about half a mile further to the unstaffed McC…
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