The Kennecott Mines
The historic and long-defunct Kennecott Mines Company of Alaska provides one of the most fascinating of historic western mine stories of any to be found. Kennecott was an interior group of mines that was only made possible by the construction of a 195-mile standard gauge railroad. This was the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, which operated concurrent to the mine from 1911 until the mine closing in 1938. The CRNW, while primarily an ore-hauler and supply line to the mill site, also operated as a common-carrier, providing freight and passenger service to the territories it opened up from the port of Cordova through the Bremner gold mining district, to Chitina and McCarthy and a host of other places. It was the first Alaskan railroad to breach the Alaskan interior from an ocean port. And, like the White Pass & Yukon, the narrow gauge which entered the Canadian interior through an Alaskan port, this one was built by the same contractor and overseen by the same engineer. Both represented major engineering achievements, but the CR&NW more so because the obstacles faced by the latter line were far more difficult, even considered impossible by some.
Here we will concentrate on the historic mines themselves--the richest high-grade copper ore veins ever found to this day--and the ones which made Kennecott a household name.
The Kennecott mill site and town below the five mines that supplied the famous mill.