Ch 16, Pt 2: "DeHaviland Arrives at Chitina"

Legacy of the Chief, Chapter 16, Pt 2:  "DeHaviland Arrives at Chitina-1923" Looking down the Klutina River toward the settlement of Copper Center, Mt Drum in distance.   --Anchorage Museum of History & Art, B62.1A.123 The name Copper Center is a misnomer. No copper mining activity ever occurred there at all. The place appeared to be something lost in time. Even the Indian village seemed to be asleep. Like all the others, it showed signs of extreme poverty and obvious government neglect, even in comparison to the rudimentary homes of the few white settlers. If there is any official policy to assist the Indians who live anywhere along the Richardson route, it is the policy of neglect. It is most striking at dusty, forgotten Copper Center. I was told that the name is a result of the area being the center of activity on the Copper River back during the gold rush in 1898 when large numbers of would-be miners made their way up the Valdez Glacier for a very tough climb to an incredibly steep summit, only to follow another glacier down to a lake on the southern edge of the Copper River valley. Several tent settlements sprouted up around Klutina Lake, but the ultimate destination was the Copper River. Those early travelers had to survive the rushing waters of the Klutina River. It was no journey for amateurs. Less than ten percent of those who attempted the trek from Valdez made it to the mouth of the Klutina. Copper Center became a temporary boom town anyway. Regrettably, no gold was to be found anywhere near the area. Copper Center became what it still is. Rather than a destination, it is just another stop along the way. The place remains to this day a destitute, predominantly Indian settlement with no apparent purpose. Blix's Roadhouse at Copper Center --Candy Waugaman Collection Even the name Copper River proved misleading. No copper was ever mined anywhere along the river. It is the Chitina River which leads into the true copper country. I am told that chiti means copper and na means river. The southern part of the Nizina and Chitina River valleys became the ultimate destination for many of those stragglers who survived the Valdez and Klutina Glaciers. It was the area of another fizzled Alaska gold rush. It would not be the gold which would place the Copper River valley on the map, but the copper. The enormous Bonanza vein outcropping brought in the railroad. For a while it looked as though the railroad would be continued through Copper Center when a right-of-way was surveyed following the Richardson route. Property was even set aside for a railroad yard at Copper Center. J.P. Morgan, who owned the CRNW Railway at that time, dangled the railroad in front of the federal government, touting it as the easiest and cheapest way to have a government-owned railroad accessing the gold fields around Fairbanks and elsewhere in the interior. He even offered the line from Cordova to Chitina to the Federal Government for less than cost. The Wilson Administration had other plans. They bought up the old Alaska Central Railroad right-of-way out of Seward and developed the town of Anchorage from the terminal they built at Ship Creek in 1915. As a result, the CRNW Railway never extended beyond Chitina to Copper Center and never will. It will always be just a mining railroad, albeit a very large one. Copper Center became another historical curiosity which will probably never amount to much. Even the agricultural experimental station and the fox farm have long since gone by the wayside. Civilization never really arrived at Copper Center. The route from Fairbanks to Copper Center is littered with high hopes and lost dreams. Many of the lodges are dead or dying. The remaining ones appear to be over-built. The trail is interesting, but rigorous. It is not a practical one to follow now that a full-service railway exists between Seward and Fairbanks. The only activity of any consequence exists along the railway line which passes through Chitina, which is isolated by over three hundred miles of almost nothing. It is truly in the midst of a wilderness. Junction from Richardson Highway to Chitina by means of the Edgerton Cut-Off. The final leg of the trip closely followed the Copper River. Willow Creek Roadhouse turned out to be nothing but a few cabins. Mrs. Griffith’s roadhouse at Kenny Lake was being expanded, reflecting an unfounded optimism based on a level of trade which will never materialize. In the view of this reporter, few lodging businesses have any chance of surviving in a wilderness which only the Indians can truly appreciate. The lodges along the route were built at a time when gold rush activity justified them. Those days are long over. The final lodge before reaching Chitina was the Lower Tonsina, a two-story modern facility that proved to be a truly wonderful lunch stop. Nafstead's Lower Tonsina Roadhouse on the Edgerton Cut-Off road to Chitina Predictably, the final leg of the trip along the Edgerton Road was much like the tedious run from Fairbanks to Copper Center. Muddy streams and stunted forest lands only served to relieve miles of tundra heavy with mosquitoes. These features are typical of great expanses of the lower country. They are uninspiring and provide nothing of interest to the sophisticated traveler.  Chitina is the only town containing first-class accommodations for the traveler all the way from Fairbanks. The Hotel Chitina, though out of place in this dusty wilderness, is truly a pleasant surprise and an especially welcome respite after so many days of traveling through such primitive country. The entire downtown area is steam-heated and has electricity and running water. One just wants to stop and rest in a large, warm bathtub and find badly needed relief from many days of bone-jerking, mud-crawling, irritating, mosquito-infested travel. This is just the place to do it. This grand establishment is Oscar Breedman’s Hotel Chitina. It is the largest hotel in the interior. Sadly, even this hotel is largely empty. Only about a dozen of its seventy rooms are occupied. Once the Alaska Railroad reached Fairbanks, the Cordova to Chitina to Fairbanks run became nothing more than an annoyance. Down the muddy street, heading west, the Commercial Hotel, which caters mainly to the miners and other travelers of limited means, is less than half full. The lot where the three-story Overland Hotel once stood remains a charred empty spot, unlikely to ever be re-built. All that remains are the tourist runs. The one out of Valdez follows the Richardson Trail to Tonsina Lodge--a well-established overnight destination. The following day the visitors travel to the cut-off for forty-mile trip to Chitina. The third day involves the highly scenic ride aboard the Copper River and Northwestern, featuring first class dining service to Miles and Childs Glacier before the train terminates at to Cordova , leaving the passengers at the upscale Windsor Hotel before departure on an Alaska Steamship liner. Tourism is strictly a summer business. One can only imagine how quiet it must be in this very remote sub-arctic Alaskan outpost in the winter when no such traffic exists. Tourist buses making a brief stop at Summit Lake along the Richardson Trail It is plain as the nose on this reporter’s face that this place is doomed. The vast interior is not dying, it is dead. The people who live here seem to overlook the obvious. The copper will not last. If one was to watch the daily procession of ore trains running through Chitina, it would be easy to believe that it could go on forever. This reporter’s long experience with boom towns of the American West dictates otherwise. The end will come sooner than the residents here could ever imagine. The train will leave one day, never to return. There will be no rich copper mine, no freight or passenger service, and no tourists. It will simply end. Most likely, the mine and railroad will die a sudden death, and few will see it coming or believe what they see when it happens. But it will vanish. Mark my words and place a flask of the finest brandy and a box of good Cuban cigars on it. This reporter picks sooner rather than later. The white settlers who depend on the railroad should count themselves lucky indeed if they get fifteen more years out of it. The railroad will quit running and the country will return to the Indians. Undoubtedly the Indians applaud the end of the copper and the railroad. Not all that long ago all this was their land. It appears to this reporter that it will soon be exclusively theirs again. This writer does not mince words. That’s why he is an independent reporter. Let’s call it like it is. The Indians probably won’t even miss us. We have done them no favors here. Time to think about heading home before the welcome mat wears completely out.     Map showing the locations mentioned in John DeHaviland's itinerary along the Richardson & Edgerton Highways, Fairbanks to Chitina, 1923. This dispatch goes to the San Francisco Examiner by way of the government mail pick-up at the Wells-Fargo telegraph office, the CRNW railroad depot, Chitina, Territory of Alaska. --John DeHaviland, July 25, 1923 Continue with Chapter 17:  "Interview at Chitina"