Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark!

What is the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark?

These are the remains of the 20th Century mining town of Kennecott!

What Makes It Historical?

For generations, the copper found in these mountains had supplied the Athna people with the materials for making weapons, tools, and art. It was a secret that could not be contained for long after the U.S. military learned that the Athna name for their main river, Chitina, meant “Copper River,” and Chief Nicolai found himself dealing first with Lieutenant Henry Allen’s survey crew, then Captain William Abercrombie’s in 1898, following the Klondike Gold Rush. By 1900, the word was out: these mountains were full of chiti!

Funded by the Havemeyer, Guggenheim, and J.P. Morgan families, engineer Stephen Birch bought up all mining operations in the area, consolidating the region’s copper processing into a single company town called Kennecott, ironically named for naturalist, Robert Kennecott! Using the latest technology and the power of gravity, Kennecott grew around a 14-story concentration mill (the largest wooden building in the USA) connected to each mine by 3-mile long tramways. Processing each boulder to the size of a marble, and leaching every crumb of copper out of the rock with ammonia and eucalyptus oil, this operation extracted an astonishing 98% of available copper out of the base rock! By the time operations closed in 1938, Kennecott had reaped $300 million (almost $7 billion in 2025 dollars) from the Wrangell Mountains and shipped it all out via the 196-mile long Copper River & Northwestern Railway. These mines closed suddenly in 1938, so suddenly that all the miners had an hour and a half to clear out and catch the only train out of the wilderness!

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Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!