Ch 1, Part 2 of 2, " Echoes" from "Legacy of the Chief"

 

 

Chapter 1:  Echoes, pt 2

"It is still possible to follow along the old railroad track bed in the places carrying the old names, such as Uranatina, or Chitina, Strelna, or McCarthy, but especially at Kennecott, and pick up the faint sounds of laughter or crying or shouting or some other echo of people long gone. Sometimes it is the sound of the clanging of the heavy metal tools. Occasionally the reverberations of a train working its way up the valley can still be heard. That can only be the legendary ghost train, Chitina Local No. 71, maintaining its unearthly schedule along the uninhabited valley. At some spiritual or other-dimensional level the train still runs, the mines still operate and the people never left."

The 95-ton Brooks Mikado sits at the CRNW roundhouse at Cordova in 1942, awaiting the cutter's torch.  The U.S. Army shipped this locomotive to the Alaska Railroad, where it was found unserviceable because the boiler blew up while the CRNW was still in operation (about 1936)  --photo courtesy of C.L. Siebert, Jr

It was late in August of 1900 when Clarence Smith and "Tarantula" Jack Warner worked their way up the Kennicott Glacier valley in search of exposed copper veins. The Nicolai Prospect itself is only a few miles and two ridges away. It had only been established the yera before and its existence suggested the possibilities for immense quantities of copper ore somewhere in the area. There was no mistaking the Bonanza outcropping for anything else but exposed high-grade copper, even from three miles away. It was near the mouth of Bonanza Creek by the Kennicott Glacier that the two prospectors first spotted the bright-green metallic rock. Legend has it that the exposed copper appeared to be an alpine meadow. When one of the men spotted copper float in Bonanza Creek, the two began following it toward the source. The float became richer and more plentiful as the two began an exhausting climb that brought them to the base of an old glacial cirque. As the prospectors approached the sheer cliff-face, little doubt remained that they had found a massive vein of almost pure copper. It must have taken all the rest of the day for the men to work their way up the steep, rugged ridge, 4,000 feet above the glacier, where they finally staked the outcropping. A geologist named Stephen Birch was in Valdez temporarily attached to a U.S. Army party headed by Captain Abercrombie. Birch learned of the spectacular find from Jack Smith. The real reason Birch came to Alaska was to investigate mineral investment opportunities. Operating as an agent for investors Henry Havemeyer and James Ralph, Birch began negotiations with the men who represented the larger company of prospectors known as the McClellan group. Dan Kain was the first of the eleven to sell an interest directly to Birch.

"Even as the other echoes gradually wane, those of the Ahtnas of the Raven Clan will not.  They cannot.  Here they must remain. For this is the land of Nicolai--the last great chief of a humble, but proud and unconquered people who were placed on this land of the 'Atna'tuuTs'itu' to be its guardians. These are the Ahtna Indians who were here from the beginning and who will be here until the very end of humankind--Saghani Utsuuy--the people of the Raven Clan--the Children of the Earth."

Ruins of the "Million Dollar Bridge, " CRNW Mile 49, looking east toward Miles Lake and Miles Glacier --Historic American Engineering Record

Only big business had the capital necessary to exploit massive copper deposits occurring deep within the Alaskan interior. Once Birch entered the scene, the door was wide open. What had started as a small, but superficially-spectacular copper outcropping in a remote place known as the Nicolai Prospect, mushroomed into an irresistible attraction for the powerful men who would build the railroad that would change everything. The wild frontier which those early prospectors had first encountered was rapidly transformed with the completion of a modern, standard-gauge, first-class railway in 1911, into a territorial mining district with most of the amenities of western civilization. It was soon possible to raise a family comfortably in the towns of Kennecott, McCarthy and Chitina on the southern slopes of the remote Wrangell Range.

The Million Dollar Bridge at 49 Mile (the cost was closer to 1.5 million dollars), looking west.   The Miles & Childs Glacier Bridge was built by Katalla Corporation and the American Bridge Company as a Pratt truss-through, single-track, four-span structure.  It was originally 1,570 feet long, including the approach trestles.  The rails stood 30 feet above the water.  The 1964 earthquake caused span no. 4 to fall into the river --Historic American Engineering Record

Kennecott was the largest and most modern town. It had the only hospital in the district. It also boasted a recreation hall where basketball could be played and films could be viewed, a library, dairy, cold storage plant, tennis court, and ready access to Sears and Roebuck catalog items, thanks to the railroad service. The huge power plant heated the many industrial buildings, cottages and even the wooden sidewalks through its system of buried steam pipes. The town had reliable power and running water throughout. All of the town structures except staff row were painted a neat barn-red with white trim. Staff row was painted white with dark green trim. This distinction was an indication of the upper-class status of staff row. By 1915 the railroad had eighteen locomotives, eight large passenger coaches and 256 freight cars. Whenever possible, it was soon operating six days a week between Cordova and Kennecott. Abruptly and almost rudely, after a brief but event-filled and heady period of just forty years, from 1898 when the Valdez-Klutina Glacier trek occurred until 1938 when the last train pulled out, it was all over. Kennecott quickly but quietly shut down. The white inhabitants of the towns and hamlets along the railroad deserted the district en masse overnight. It happened so quickly that many of the homes were left completely intact, right down to the china on the tables and the linen on the beds--as if the occupants had simply walked off, intending to soon return. None of them ever came back. It was over. But most believed that Kennecott’s rapid pull-out was just another temporary mine closure, like the one which had occurred during the Great Depression from 1932 until 1935. Yet while many believed that the large interior town of Kennecott and the mines on the ridge above were sleeping, in fact the life that was Kennecott had quietly slipped away like a man in the rear of a crowded room slipping unnoticed out the back door--death imitating sleep. Only the Ahtna Indians who had lived in the area since the end of the last Ice Age, and a very few hardy settlers and miners remained behind. The company town of Kennecott, with its fourteen-story mill and enormous power plant and other enormous buildings, along with the completely dependent supply-town of McCarthy, plus all 196 miles of railroad line now sat empty and forlorn. All services ended. The delivery of all those things along the entire railroad line which kept modern civilization alive in the wilderness, from mail and telegrams to bunker fuel and coal, to dry goods and groceries, to player pianos and Victrolas abruptly ceased. In short order, first the railroad rolling stock, then the steel rail, the power lines, the machinery and the buildings and their furnishings began to disappear. In time, the trestles began to collapse and the Copper River began washing out sections of the rail bed. The stretch of railroad south of Chitina and north of the old Million Dollar Bridge became inaccessible when the willows and alders took over the remaining railway line, strangling the rail bed under growth as thick as any tropical jungle. Remote buildings and other structures collapsed under the weight of successive winters of heavy snow until little remained of what had once been a magnificent railroad system. Yet even as the railroad remnants, from the very small to the gigantic, gradually vanished, the echoes remained. All those people engaged in so much intense activity in those four decades had left their indelible imprint upon the land. All those frustrations, triumphs, failures, the outright catastrophes, the deaths, the births, the new-found friendships and the marriages--all those things which are common in any human community--were somehow concentrated and magnified along the rail line. It is still possible to follow along the old railroad track bed in the places carrying the old names such as Uranatina or Chitina, Strelna or McCarthy, but especially at Kennecott, and pick up the faint sounds of laughter or crying or shouting or some other echo of people long gone. Sometimes it is the sound of the clanging of heavy metal tools. Occasionally the reverberations of the train working its way up the tracks, along with the hollow sound of a steam whistle echoing its way up the valley, can still be heard. That could only be the legendary ghost train, Chitina Local No. 71, maintaining its unearthly schedule along the uninhabited valley. From time to time a complete passenger train is rumored to have been spotted from the air, but none has never been found on the ground.

"Nicolai's presence proved to be crucial to the (Lt. Allen) expedition.  It guaranteed that the party would be able to proceed through the valley in peace and with a good supply of food.  Everywhere they went there was a welcoming feast honoring the tyone and his personal guests."

Native cache near Chitina --Candy Waugaman Collection

From the most distant mine sites--the lofty encampments of Erie, Jumbo, Glacier, Bonanza and Mother Lode, high along the Bonanza Ridge, on down the line through Kennecott and beyond to Blackburn, Shushanna Junction, McCarthy, Chokosna, Strelna, Chitina, Uranatina, Tiekel, Bremner Station, Abercrombie Rapids Landing and the Million Dollar Bridge--the wind whistles through them all. It carries a multitude of echoes through all these isolated places. Sometimes they are louder and more intense than at other times. But the echoes are always there. At some spiritual or other-dimensional level, the train still runs, the mines still operate, and the people never left. This is a very special, highly-energized place. Over time, as the players from those old days are forgotten, the echoes will begin to fade, but not all of them. Even as the other echoes gradually wane, those of the Ahtnas of the Raven Clan will not. They cannot. Here they must remain. For this is the land of Nicolai--the last great chief of a humble but proud and unconquered people who were placed on this land of the ‘Atna’tuuTs’itu’ to be its guardians. These are the Ahtna Indians who were here from the beginning and who will be here until the very end of humankind--Saghani Utsuuy--the people of the Raven Clan--the Children of the Earth.

Home of Chief Goodlataw, Anchorage Museum of History & Art, B74.36.2g

Continue to Chapter 2, "The Wrangell Formation"