A Ghost Town Called Kennecott - Photo Story

I have a thing about ghost towns and abandoned places. Especially American ones. There's something fascinating about how these American towns sprung up from nothing in the most inhospitable places, jumping at the opportunity to find gold, coal, copper, silver. And then how they faded away again just as quickly when the land had given up all its bounty. And how some ghost towns are frozen in time, while others have decayed.

Kennecott was built in 1911 when prospectors found copper near the mighty glacier of Wrangell St Elias National Park. The main feature of the town is the towering, red wooden copper mine, surrounded by smaller wooden buildings - general stores, a school, a pharmacy, houses.

`You can take a tour around the copper mine, climbing its many floors to the top for spectacular glacier views, and then exploring the generator rooms where machinery has been left exactly as it was. Around the mine, you can see little stones laced with brown or oxidised green copper. Kennecott produced a great deal of copper during WW1, but then very quickly began to run out of metal.

The mine closed in 1938. Workers and their families were given just two hours' warning before the last train left Kennecott for good, because the owners didn't want workers to reduce their productivity in their final hours of work. The people of Kennecott had no time to pack, and boarded the last train with nothing.

In the 1960s, the company who owned the land tried to destroy the entire town, for fear of being held liable for future accidents on the site. For whatever reason, those tasks with torching the town only did a fraction of the job and then bolted with the money.

And so the town was left much as it was in 1938. A ghost town surrounded by wilderness and glaciers.

The closest habitation is the tiny village of McCarthy, a wilderness community made up mostly of the guides and conservationists who help visitors learn about Kennecott's history today. In the winter, when the snow comes and keeps on coming, even this little village becomes a ghost town.