Mccarthy motherload mine tours
He came here in the mid 80s and fell in love with the area. Neil bought Ma Johnsons and the nearby restaurant and hostel in 2001 and has been slowly restoring and fixing it up ever since. Neil actually refers to a ‘downtown’ when he talked about McCarthy with me. Not Everyone Wants to Be Alone in McCarthy McCarthy Museum – a curator and her museum dog. She lived year around in a ‘dry cabin’ (no running water) and needed to do a water run yet that night, so she was getting ready to close the museum but let me quickly walk through it first a fascinating walk through newspaper clippings, railroad and mining history.
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I kind of got it though – sometimes you just want to disappear and McCarthy is a great place to do that. “I just like getting away and being in a place where people can’t find me, and they can’t reach me by cell phone,” she replied unapologetically antisocial. However, I waited until she got done with the history ‘lesson’ and ask her what I really want to know why do people live here now and what draws them here? The Loners I asked about McCarthy and she launched into telling me all about the mining history and prohibition. She wore a badge that read “Curator” so I struck up a conversation with her while petting the ‘museum dog’ as she referred to him. A woman and her dog sat outside soaking up the warm sun. I walked up the gravel road to the museum. Kennicott Mine Who Lives in Present Day McCarthy Alaska? McCarthy was modeled after the wild western towns and still has that same personality today. It was a forbidden town…which meant it was a fun town. Because alcoholic beverages and prostitution were forbidden in the mining ‘company’ town of Kennicott, the town of McCarthy grew 5 miles away as an area to provide those in-demand services not available in the company town namely drinking, gambling, and prostitution.
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McCarthy served as the supply and recreation stop for the entire Kennicott mining district. In 1900 copper was discovered in the area around McCarthy and soon a mining business was created by Kennicott Mining Company. McCarthy Alaska Mining Historyīut it wasn’t always this quiet. The only way to describe this Mcarthy Alaska was “simple”.
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A hotel, a hostel, a few run down cabins, 2 restaurants plus an occasional pizza truck found across the river. As far as I could tell there were two gravel roads no more than a 1/4 mile long. A shuttle ran around the town but I was rather confused as to what it went to. McCarthy’s ‘Main Street’ was gravel and riddled with potholes. People were getting ready to ship out, and a few hearty locals were ready to hunker down for the long winter. McCarthy’s tourism season only runs for 100 days of the year. I arrived with only 1 week left in the tourist season, so shelves were a practically empty in the one local market and you could tell people were a bit antsy.
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Ironically this tiny little town was surrounded on all sides by the largest US National Park, Wrangell St. However, I also had another reason, I wanted to understand why people would live here in this remote area and tiny town. I came to small-town McCarthy to experience its remoteness and history as well as it’s surrounding Wrangell St Elias National Park and abundance of glaciers (and the best part, McCarthy Alaska travel is relatively unknown!). Go Flightseeing Over Wrangell St Elias National Park Go on a Glacier Hike in Wrangell St Elias National Park
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“We also don’t have keys for the room, “ she explained “there’s really no need to have them – your stuff will be absolutely safe.” I loved this little hotel and town already and was thrilled to be staying in McCarthy as opposed to the big, luxe Kennicott Glacier Lodge outside of town where all the other couples on my Wrangell Mountain Air bush flight were shipped off to.
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In this town of 40 full time residents, this is the only hotel in town. Ma Johnson’s has rooms for rent and shared bathroom facilities and if you don’t like shared bathrooms, then you are out of luck in McCarthy, Alaska. Ma Johnson’s Hotel used to be an old boarding house and brothel and as you step up on the big porch and enter the lobby, you feel as if you have moved back through time indeed. Lace doilies, flowery pillows, and plenty of antiques dot the lobby of this remote hotel. The place felt a bit like my grandmothers old farmhouse a mix of functional and feminine. “We don’t have electrical plugs in the room to stay true to the history of Ma Johnson’s, but also because we think it makes people more social to sit in the common area and interact,” she said as she showed me around the lobby and headed towards my reserved room.