The Road to McCarthy

The Road to McCarthy starts where the pavement ends. Mom and Dad will remember the Glenn Highway, at Glennallenn they continued west where we turned south on the Richardson Highway then we went west again to Chitina (pronounced Chit-na).

In 1908 a railroad was built along the Copper River from Cordova on Prince William Sound to north to Chitina. At Chitina the railroad turned west to McCarthy and up to Kennecott. In 1941 the Copper River & Northwestern Railroad (CR&NW RR or the Can't Run & Never Will RR) gave the right of way to the state of Alaska for a road. Today the section from Chitina to McCarthy is indeed a road -- 60 miles of dirt. Watch for railroad spikes that work their way to the surface to eat your tires. We wondered why the section from Chitina to Cordova was never converted to a road, but in true Bush Alaska fashion it appears that the folks in Cordova can't agree on road access (currently the only way into Cordova is by air or via the Alaska State Ferry.) I guess the folks of Cordova can't agree even aver 60 years on whether they should have a road or not because just a couple years ago another resolution on converting the rail bed to a road was about barely defeated.

Rental cars in Alaska often have a list of roads that are "restricted" but luckily they happened to miss the McCarthy Road so we took it west (after making sure we had a spare tire). It is often only a single lane, but we didn't find much traffic this time of year. There were a surprising number of cabins along the way. I hadn't expected it to be so developed. We also found some wetlands and waterfowl along the way. Hunting season had just closed so we didn't see a single moose -- bummers.

We did cross a very tall railroad bridge that was single lane. We passed a second bridge that had a significant lean -- we were glad the road didn't cross that bridge.

At the end of the road is a milky glacial stream and a parking lot full of vehicles in various stages of operability. We found an empty slot and threw a change of clothes into the day pack and walked across the foot bridge then 3/4 mile into the town of McCarthy.

Along the road

American Widgeon

Just a two track

Rail bridge