Ahtna Athabaskan natives traveled the river corridors, foothills, and passes of the Wrangell Mountains for several hundred years prior to European arrival in the area. They lived in semipermanent camps, leaving for weeks at a time to hunt and to gather berries, birchwood, and other resources. Trade routes with other native peoples were well established. Copper, found near the present-day town of McCarthy, was used for tools and for trade with other native groups. Rumors of the copper deposits, as well as the lure of fur animals, attracted Russians into the Copper River Basin for an extended period from the 1760s to 1867. Most encountered considerable hostility from the Ahtna, who fought the Russian occupation.
The first recorded geographic observations of the western Wrangell Mountains were made by Lt. Henry T. Allen of the U.S. Army in 1885. In March of that year, Allen and three companions landed at the mouth of the Copper River and began one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of Alaskan exploration. Mapping as they went, the party ascended the Copper River around the west end of the Wrangell Mountains, crossed the Alaska Range through Suslota Pass, and then proceeded down the Tetlin, Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon Rivers to the Bering Sea just in time to catch the last boat to leave the Alaska coast before freeze-up in early September. Allen's party was the first scientific expedition to cross the Alaska Range from the Gulf of Alaska to the Yukon River.
Before going north over the Alaska Range divide into the Tanana River Valley, Allen explored the upper Copper River Basin, the Chitina River Valley, and the western Wrangell Mountains. He named the Chitina and the Chitistone Rivers (both names incorporating the Athabaskan word "chiti," meaning "copper") and established friendly relations with Chief Nicolai and his Copper River group of Ahtna Indians. He measured the heights and named many of the high Wrangell peaks, including Mount Blackburn, Mount Drum, and Mount Sanford, during his long summer sojourn in the area.
After Allen's exploration, several scientific parties explored the Wrangell Mountains area. The team of Lt. Frederick Schwatka of the U.S. Army and geologist C.W. Hayes of the U.S. Geological Survey reached the Chitina River Valley by way of the White River and Skolai Pass in 1891.
Spurred by these early explorations and the influx of prospectors during the Klondike gold discoveries in Canada, the U.S. Geological Survey and the War Department notably increased their efforts to make topographic and geologic maps of the country. U.S. Geological Survey geologist F.C. Schrader accompanied the 1898 U.S. Army survey led by Capt. William Abercrombie up the Copper River and into the Wrangell Mountains. That same year, U.S. Geological Survey geologist W.C. Mendenhall joined U.S. Army Capt. Edwin Glenn's expedition from Cook Inlet up the Matanuska River into the Copper River Basin. Alfred Brooks and William Peters of the U.S. Geological Survey and Oscar Rohnand A.H. McNeer of the War Department conducted separate expeditions to the Nabesna and Chisana areas on the north side of the Wrangell Mountains in 1899.
These journeys eventually led to mineral development of the Wrangell Mountains. The first gold discovery in the northern Wrangell Mountains was on Jacksina Creek near the headwaters of the Nabesna River in 1899. In that same year, Oscar Rohn, on his exploration of the upper Chitina Valley, found rich pieces of chalcocite ore in the glacial moraine of Kennicott Glacier and pointed out similarities to the rich copper deposits of Michigan's Lake Superior District. Rohn also named the Chitistone Limestone and the Nikolai Greenstone geologic formations that proved to be important hosts for mineral deposits. A year later, prospectors traced the chalcocite to deposits on Bonanza Ridge, which eventually became the incredibly rich Bonanza Mine, one of five mines that supplied copper and silver ore to the now-historic Kennecott Mill.
The Kennecott mines did not go into full production until 1911, when the completion of a 196-mile-long railroad from Cordova, near the mouth of the Copper River, to the Kennicott mining town allowed transport of the rich copper concentrate. In 27 years of operation, over a billion pounds of ore valued at $100 to 300 million was hauled on the railroad.
The mine and the railroad were abandoned in 1938, when the rich ore was exhausted. The railroad bed now provides the base for most of the Chitina-McCarthy Road along the south flank of the Wrangell Mountains in the heart of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
Gold discoveries in the Nabesna area led to construction of the Nabesna Road, which was built in the early 1930's and used to haul gold ore from the now-closed Nabesna Mine. Today, the Nabesna Road provides vehicle access along the north side of the Wrangell Mountains.
After the Kennecott mines closed, several efforts were made to revive mining interest in the area. Ernest Gruening, Director of U.S. Territories and later Alaska's governor and U.S. Senator, was the first to recommend the area as a national park or monument. After a flight over the area in 1938, he wrote a memorandum to the Secretary of the Interior:
The region is superlative in its scenic beauty and measures up fully and beyond the requirements for its establishment as a National Monument and later as a National Park. It is my personal view that from the standpoint of scenic beauty, it is the finest region in Alaska. I have travelled through Switzerland extensively, have flown over the Andes, and am familiar with the Valley of Mexico and with other parts of Alaska. It is my unqualified view that this is the finest scenery that I have ever been privileged to see.
Passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 authorized the Federal government to withdraw and study Federal lands in Alaska for future uses. In 1978, Present Jimmy Carter declared the area a National Monument because of its scientific and cultural significance. When Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, the Wrangell Mountains became part of the 13.2-million-acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest U.S. National Park.
Wrangell-St. Elias is one of four contiguous conservation units spanning some 24 million acres that have been recognized by the United Nations as an international World Heritage Site. The original 1978 designation included Wrangell-St. Elias and Kluane National Park in the Yukon Territory of Canada. In 1993, both Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and a new park, the Alsek-Tatshenshini Provincial Park in British Columbia, were added to that designation. Altogether, it is the largest internationally protected area in the world.
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