Wrangell-St. Elias: Thirteen Million Acres and the Copper That Paid for None of It

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve covers thirteen point two million acres, more land than the entire country of Switzerland. It is larger than the next two American national parks combined. Within its boundaries are nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the United States, the largest concentration of glaciers on the continent outside the polar regions, and the ruins of one of the most productive copper mining operations in American history.

The Kennecott Copper Corporation, financed by the Guggenheim family, began extracting ore from the mountains of the Wrangell Range in nineteen oh three. The ore body, which had been located with the assistance of Ahtna Athabascan guides whose families had known these mountains for generations, proved to be among the richest copper deposits ever found. By nineteen thirty-eight, when the ore body was exhausted, the company had extracted more than two hundred million dollars in copper.

The Guggenheims built a two-hundred-mile railroad from the Copper River to the port at Cordova to carry the ore out. They built a company town, Kennecott, high in the mountains, with a hospital, a school, and a store. When the ore ran out, the company closed everything and walked away in sixty days, leaving the town standing.

The Ahtna Athabascan people received nothing for the copper. Their territory had been available for extraction under the terms of the eighteen sixty-seven Alaska purchase, a transaction conducted without their knowledge or consent.

The Kennecott mill town still stands, preserved within the national park, its red buildings weathering in the mountain air. The National Park Service has in recent years worked with Ahtna Incorporated, the Ahtna regional ANCSA corporation, to incorporate Ahtna history into the site's interpretation. The copper is gone. The question of what it was worth and to whom is still being worked out.