Ch 24: "Green Butte Copper"

Legacy of the Chief, Chapter 24: "Green Butte Copper-1924"

click on picture for larger image: some of these images appear in the book for this chapter.

McCarthy, looking east  There was not much to downtown McCarthy.   The main street was Shushanna Avenue,  on which there were two main business blocks.  The largest building was a deep flat-roofed white-painted structure which housed what was once the infamous Gustave Priesner’s drug store.   After Gustave disappeared in the midst of a double murder investigation, it became Ben Jackson’s store.  The large McCarthy Drugstore was the center of town.   Flanking the double-wide building was Laurie Brothers Fine Men’s Clothing, Kate Kennedy’s Alaska Hotel and Archie Poulin’s Alaska Billiards Hall to the north and Roy Snyder’s Mecca Cafe and Pool Hall to the south.            The next block heading south  toward McCarthy Creek consisted of J.B. O’Niel’s General Store and Henry Olsen’s  Golden Hotel and Saloon.  One block east of J.B. O’Niel’s sat his competitor’s store--O.G. Watsjold’s Hardware and Grocery.  It shared Kennicott Avenue with Ma Johnson’s Hotel and Cap Hubrick’s Photo Studio and Gift Shop.           The plain, large building behind Ma’s was the Arctic Brotherhood building. It stood on one of the highest points in town.  Uphill from that was a white framed one-room school house.  Margaret Harrais arrived in town that year to take over the job of school teacher.  She became the town’s staunchest prohibitionist, but in 1924 McCarthy was still very much a wild-west community floating in liquor, gambling and prostitution.  McCarthy, showing Shushanna Avenue and Kennicott Avenue running perpendicular to McCarthy Creek, 1939  --Bradford Washburn Collection, UAF Archives The Golden Bar in the ghost town of McCarthy, 1955  --UAF Archives            On the west side of Shushanna Avenue was the McCarthy Sheet Metal Works and an assemblage of small cottages. Anchoring  the northern end of Shushanna Avenue was the railroad yard, featuring a warehouse noted for its diamond-shaped windows and fancy barn-like doors.  The building sat elevated on posts at the southern end of the rail siding.  The McCarthy Creek end of the avenue included the commissioner’s residence and a barn. The roof of the residence mimicked that of the barn.  The true landmark, however, was the old Mother Lode power plant. It had been sitting idle since 1918 and was used only for two seasons before that.            In some ways this silent dinosaur was a perfect symbol of McCarthy.  It was built quickly but expertly and expensively, then used only briefly before becoming obsolete.  When Kennecott absorbed the  Mother Lode Copper Company, the power plant was shut down, never to be used again.  Its highly desirable generators sat idle at the edge of a town which badly needed the reliable power.   Kennecott found a use for the generators in 1924, but the plant itself remained as an early indicator of what was to become of Kennecott and McCarthy--the towns which owed their existence and ultimate demise to the Copper River and Northwestern Railway--and the copper itself.           Beyond the plant was the wooden bridge which crossed the glacier-fed creek. The bridge marked the beginning of the Nizina road which headed up the south bluff, meandering about eight miles to the four-span  bridge crossing with a trestle approach on the south end.  The road continued on to the Dan, May, and Chititu Creek placer operations of the Nizina gold district. The Nizina Mining District, showing location of Kennecott Mines, Green Butte, Mother Lode & Nicolai Mines.   --USGS 1941      Continue with "Green Butte Copper,"  pt 2