Abandoned Landscapes and Impermanent Places: “Cold Mountain Trail” by Tom Kizzia
“We all have ghost towns, the impermanent places we dream of. This is Alaska.”
Named for the Kennecott Glacier in the valley below, McCarthy-Kennicott originally grew up along the Copper River in southeastern Alaska after 1900. During this time, this community in the Wrangell Mountains was a mine near the home of miners looking for work at the Kennecott Copper Mine. They lived in a settlement called Mill Town. The community faded away in 1938 when copper miners and their families took the last train out of the mountains.
The intersection of Kennecott and Gates glaciers in the Wrangell Mountains. (National Park Service/Frick).
During the 1970s and 80s, the area began to attract new settlers and tourists, and the town was revived. Tom Kiziaof Cold Mountain Trail: McCarthy-Kennicott’s Ghost Town Decades Covers the intervening years, when McCarthy-Kennicott residents were those seeking to live in Hermit Kingdom: jungle pilot, prospector, liar, lunatic and lover.
Kizzia’s biography of McCarthy-Kennecott sheds light on a place where the 20th century past was not marked by linear forces of progress or development, but rather a precarious movement of life living among trees and mountains, forgotten by the outside world . “This book looks at people sifting through abandoned landscapes,” Kizzia told GlacierHub. “Who are these people?”
In 1983, as a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, Kizia met Jim Edwards, who lived in McCarthy in the foothills of the Wrangell Mountains in eastern Alaska and “lived longer than anyone.” Edwards moved there in 1953, and about a decade later, the town was abandoned and left behind by the mining enterprises of American settlers.His memories of those who stayed — “the old men…the people who stayed when everyone was gone” — and those who next– students, hippies, geologists, political activists and oil developers – anchored cold mountain trail Like it meanders through the years between 1938 and 1983.
Alaska, located in the far north, is home to most of the glaciers in the United States and has long been think In American mythology, as the final frontier, untouched and distant. In Alaska, McCarthy-Kennicott is the lost and cold place of legend.
GlacierHub spoke with Kizzia to learn more about this lost land between glaciers shrinking and industrial development, and the role of humans in the Alaskan landscape. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
Clouds around Mount Blackburn in the Wrangell Ranges. (Alaska NPS/ Frick)
GlacierHub: How would you describe the book to readers?
Tom Kizia: It’s a tale of humanity persevering in a natural wilderness setting, with the tide of civilization receding and everyone leaving as railways close. A few stayed, and I was curious as to what purpose they were staying for and what attracted the later settlers. This is a story about these settlers trying to distance themselves from the rest of the world, about glorious anarchy without government oversight. This is the story of an old Alaska that has continued into the present day, while the rest of Alaska is urbanizing and dealing with the growth of oil pipelines and the boom of the 70s and 80s.
This book is an opportunity to look back – the living memories are still there.
GH: Can you tell me how you conceived this project?
traditional knowledge: I think cold mountain trail Local History – A genre that writers often condescend. From my journalism work, I’ve learned that exclusion is an important part of crafting a narrative, but local histories tend to twist and tell multiple stories. The longer I write this book, the bigger my ambitions. It started as a project to provide a brief history for the McCarthy local museum. Writing for the local oldies was a start, but a lot of people—relatively speaking…all of whom could fit into a building in New York—moved to the McCarthy area that didn’t recognize these characters, so I’m working on them as well.
Then over time, I started writing for all Alaskans. In the modern world, in modern Alaska, there is a sense of loss and change. Something about Alaska used to be true, but not so much now. What is lost is not easy to count on, and it is easy to be sentimental. Not all great things are lost. I think I managed to sell some of them in a bottle. Honestly, the response was surprising. It seemed to touch a nerve. I hope to convey Alaska’s fascination with Alaska to the next 48 people.
An abandoned building in Kennecott, also known as Kennecott and the Kennecott Mine. (National Park Service / Neil Herbert).
GH: What’s the charm?
traditional knowledge: Imagine you have your living room and suddenly this glacier cuts through a wall and fills three quarters of the room and you can only work on the edge of it. That’s what it’s like to be in this community. The town of McCarthy is built right on the tarmac, at the tip of the glacier. The mine is on the mountainside and the road has to go around the line of the glacier to get there. To get into the city, you have to cross a river that flows from a glacier. There is a hidden lake that floods every year and washes away human bridges. Glaciers dominate the valley.
But things have changed a bit. Mill Town is built right on the edge of a glacier, look out and you’ll see a wall of ice. Now you go there and stand in the ruins of Mill Town and you can see for miles and miles as the glacier has dropped so much – not just receding from the toes, but significantly. You are looking down at the glacier instead of looking up at it. And all this is the result of industrial civilization, the Kennecott mine is a beacon of industrial civilization, and everyone at McCarthy lives in its consequences. It’s incredible to be able to see so much change so quickly in geological time.
GH: What question would you most like to answer with this book?
traditional knowledge: How can we settle in the wilderness, can we? As a community, as an individual, as a family? Of course, some at McCarthy are not interested in these issues, they are more interested in moving on for the sake of making money. But as for the rest – it’s interesting to see their labor on the land. In such a sparse landscape, individuals stand out so clearly.
In addition, the book asks whether there could be a role for human communities in the Alaskan landscape, which is different from the ideal of a national park in the lower 48th century, where indigenous peoples and other settlers were pushed out, creating an early 20th century pure nature. version of. The idea of conservation in Alaska is far more complex, and the McCarthy community was able to insert itself into that conversation. Much of the book asks, “What are we saving here?”
GH: How does the last question relate to the ghost town theme of the book?
traditional knowledge: Ghost towns are a metaphor for the frontier. We tend to focus on the boom side of the frontier. Opportunity to make a fortune. But the road killers left behind are nostalgic at best. I wanted to see if there was an epic that could be written about the decline of the frontier, not just the boom. At McCarthy, we can think of Kennecott Copper as the oil giant and the personification of the era we live in today, which, as Kennecott has done, is also beginning to enter a recession. The idea that Alaska itself could become a ghost town like Kennecott, and what happened before that fall, is what’s causing the problem,’what do we keep here.
