The story
Kennecott is the great ghost town of Alaska: a copper-mining company town in the Wrangell Mountains, built on the richest concentration of copper ore ever found. Prospectors located the Bonanza outcrop in 1900 — some samples ran up to 70 percent pure chalcocite — and by 1903 the Kennecott Mines Company had a mill, five mines, and a company town rising beside the Kennicott Glacier. The company misspelled the glacier's name, which honors the naturalist Robert Kennicott, and the two spellings have coexisted ever since.
For three decades, ore came down from the peaks by aerial tram to a fourteen-story concentration mill, then out to the coast on a purpose-built railroad. The town had a hospital, a school, a store, and tidy cottages, all owned by the company. When the copper prices of the Depression met a mine that geologists had already warned was nearly exhausted, the end was quick: the last train left Kennecott on November 10, 1938.
The buildings stood abandoned in the wilderness for half a century. Kennecott is now a National Historic Landmark inside Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, the largest national park in the country, and the Park Service is stabilizing the great red mill and the surviving structures. It remains one of the most dramatic industrial ruins in America, at the end of a long gravel road most visitors are glad they drove.
What remains today
The 14-story concentration mill, the power plant, hospital, general store, and workers' cottages — a National Historic Landmark district under NPS stabilization.
Questions from the field
- Why is it spelled Kennecott and not Kennicott?
- The glacier and river were named for naturalist Robert Kennicott; the mining company misspelled it as 'Kennecott,' and both spellings survive — the company town is Kennecott, the glacier Kennicott.
- Why was Kennecott abandoned?
- Its copper ore was nearly exhausted and prices had collapsed during the Depression; the mines and mill closed, and the last train left on November 10, 1938.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Kennecott — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Kennecott's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1404588
- — NPS — Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark, Wrangell–St. Elias
- — Kennecott Copper Corporation records