Our Alaska Adventures

Mile 7 Kenny's Lake RV Park to Mile 60 McCarthy

Today everyone is celebrating the Summer Solstice in Alaska.....the only facts I have are you need dark blinds because it is light all the time...
In Anchorage Summer Solstice 19.21 hrs.
In Barrow the Sun rises May 10 and sets August 8 (84 days of light)
On the other side Winter Solstice in Anchorage is 5.28 hrs and in Barrow the Sun sets November 18 and rises January 24 (67 days of darkness)

Today is a road trip to McCarthy......98 miles one-way.....first driving the Edgerton Highway which is paved and then the McCarthy Road which is gravel and chip-and-oil....

Kenny Lake is a farming community with @400 people

Copper River Valley

Small lakes full of Rainbow Trout

Small town of Chitina

Chitina's "where-the-rails-met-the-trails" heyday coincided with the operation of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, built to line the Kennecott mines to market. The railroad hauled copper ore and supplies between the mines and Cordova. Chitina provided an intermediate stop for trains and passengers. Trains, stagecoaches, dog sleds and steamboats all passed through Chitina during the boom years, 1910-1938.

Today, dipnetting, fish wheeling, and boat fishing near Chitina attract Alaska residents in droves each summer. This is Copper River reds (sockeye) country, famous across the world. This far upriver it's strictly a personal use and subsistence salmon fishery. Licensed nonresidents can not fish here.

B&B

Hotel Chitina and Spirit Mountain Artworks

fuel and several bars

Few roads are as storied as the McCarthy Road, one of only two roads entering Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It skirts the base of the Wrangells, gaining about 1,000 feet between Chitina and its end near McCarthy. The road ends in the center of the 13.2 million acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Constructed between 1908 and 1911 the CRNW railway ran from Kennecott to O'Brien Creek outside Chitina. It departed the contemporary road system from there, following the Copper downstream all the way to the port of Cordova, on Prince William Sound. The last train to make that journey arrived there on November 11, 1938.

After the railway was abandoned the corridor was turned over to the State of Alaska which created a road in the 1960s. In 1971, a new bridge was constructed over the Copper River and the railbed was covered with gravel, creating the McCarthy Road.