Page 70 - Richardson And Glenn Highways (East Alaska)

McCARTHY & KENNICOTT
MEETING OF HISTORY & NATURE Kennicott, a mining town renovated by the National
KENNICOTT Visitor Center NEW MEMORIES
A sign in log-book at Kennicott Vis- itor Center shares visitor reactions. Some of the notes: “Awesome,” “Amazing” and “Hard to find the right adjectives - Unique - Heart Breaking Beauty.” Here in McCar- thy-Kennicott, history is well pre- served, and largely unsanitized. As a result of the preservation efforts in the National Park, new buildings are built to resemble and fit in with older buildings. Other buildings are care- fully restored by the Park Service. Of course, nothing beats the real thing, and the fascination with the mine buildings here is that many of them contain shingles and boards and nails untouched since the 1930’s.
in the wilderness became a symbol of a National Park. The Kennicott Mines tell the tale of modern man’s strug- gle with nature, and to some degree, the ability of nature to always win.
Alaska isn’t the Lower 48. An abandoned building is at risk to break and fracture from permafrost in just a few years. In Alaska, noth- ing lasts forever. These mine buildings are among the old- est preserved structures in roadside Alaska. At the same time, they are slowly being
WAGON in downtown McCarthy.
Park Service.
Perhaps the mines create a sense of scale for the en- vironment; that such huge achievements of the day could be dwarfed by glacial moraines and the massive icefields of America’s largest National Park.
Please respect the area when you visit, pack out your trash, and leave things as you found them. The farther these arti- facts and buildings get from their original time, the more special the place becomes.
METAL GEAR left since the mid-1930’s.
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