12/6/2023 0 Comments Motherlode mine alaska 2020![]() The Kennecott hospital was also the site of the first X-ray machine in Alaska. The vast majority of other town structures, including workers' bunkhouses (right), were painted red, the least expensive color at the time. The Kennecott hospital (left) stood out as the town's only white-washed building. In 1916, the peak year for production, the mines produced copper ore valued at $32.4 million. Initial ore shipments contained "72 percent copper and 18 oz. Before completion, the steamship Chittyna carried ore to the Abercrombie landing by Miles Glacier. In 1911 the first shipment of ore by train transpired. From Kennecott the ore was hauled mostly in 140-pound sacks on steel flat cars to Cordova, 196 rail miles away, via the Copper River and Northwestern Railway (CRNW). ![]() Ore was hoisted to Kennecott via the trams which head-ended at Bonanza and Jumbo. The Erie mine was perched on the northwest end of Bonanza Ridge overlooking Root Glacier about 3.7 mi (6.0 km) up a glacial trail from Kennecott. The Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother Lode and Erie mines were connected by tunnels. The Mother Lode mine was located on the east side of the ridge from Kennecott. Bonanza and Jumbo were on Bonanza Ridge about 3 mi (4.8 km) from Kennecott. Glacier, which is really an ore extension of the Bonanza, was an open-pit mine and was only mined during the summer. Kennecott had five mines: Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother Lode, Erie and Glacier. A "clerical error" resulted in the substitution of an "e" for the "i", supposedly by Stephen Birch himself. The geologist Oscar Rohn named the glacier after Robert Kennicott during the 1899 US Army Abercrombie Survey. Kennecott Mines was named after the Kennicott Glacier in the valley below. Birch was the managing partner for the Alaska operation. A similar transaction followed with the CR&NW railway and the Alaska Steamship Company. The Alaska Syndicate traded its Wrangell Mountains Mines assets for shares in the Kennecott Copper Corporation, a "new public company" formed on 29 April 1915. President Theodore Roosevelt between conservationists and those having a financial interest in the copper. Political battles over the mining and subsequent railroad were fought in the office of U.S. 1906, the Alaska Syndicate bought a 40 percent interest in the Bonanza Mine from the Alaska Copper and Coal Company and a 46.2 percent interest in the railroad plans of John Rosene's Northwestern Commercial Company. The capital was to be used for constructing a railway, a steamship line, and development of the mines. Morgan & Co., known as the Alaska Syndicate, eventually securing over $30 million. On 28 June 1906, he entered into "an amalgamation" with the Daniel Guggenheim and J.P. : 35, 55–56, 59, 73īy 1905, Birch had successfully defended the legal challenges to his property and he began the search for capital to develop the area. In the summer of 1901, he visited the property and "spent months mapping and sampling." He confirmed the Bonanza mine and surrounding by deposits were, at the time, the richest known concentration of copper in the world. Birch spent the winter of 1901-1902 acquiring the "McClellan group's interests" for the Alaska Copper Company of Birch, Havemeyer, Ralph and Schultz, later to become the Alaska Copper and Coal Company. He had the financial backing of the Havemeyer Family, and another investor named James Ralph, from his days in New York. Stephen Birch, a mining engineer just out of school, was in Alaska looking for investment opportunities in minerals. Geological Survey geologist independently found chalcocite at the same location. A few days later, Arthur Coe Spencer, U.S. Warner, a group of prospectors associated with the McClellan party, spotted "a green patch far above them in an improbable location for a grass-green meadow." The green turned out to be malachite, located with chalcocite (aka "copper glance"), and the location of the Bonanza claim. ![]() In the summer of 1900, two prospectors, "Tarantula" Jack Smith and Clarence L. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The camp and mines are now a National Historic Landmark District administered by the National Park Service. It is located beside the Kennicott Glacier, northeast of Valdez, inside Wrangell-St. state of Alaska that was the center of activity for several copper mines. Kennecott, also known as Kennicott and Kennecott Mines, is an abandoned mining camp in the Copper River Census Area in the U.S.
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