Historic background

by Ron Simpson

You have all heard of Mother Lode. It is commonly included as one of the five upper mine sites of Kennecott. They were, in order of processed copper production values: Jumbo @ 215,021 tons; Bonanza @ 194,922.9 tons; Mother Lode @ 166,038.3 tons; Erie @ 8,565.5 tons, and Glacier @ 3,526.3 tons, plus the slide ore (not ordinarily considered, but significant) @ 3,461.4 tons.

Mother Lode was developed independently of the other mines because those claims were originally held by another company. The ML was the only camp on the east side of the Bonanza Ridge facing McCarthy Creek.  Ore mined from the overhead Marvelous workings was transported from the tram head at the 5,200 foot elevation to McCarthy Creek -a tram distance of 5,000 feet-for winter sledding to Shushanna Junction.

Originally the old ML company contemplated using the creek for hydro-electric power with a dam placed at the narrow part of McCarthy Creek a few miles south of the lower camp. This was abandoned in favor of the ML power plant that still sits at McCarthy.

ML was undercapitalized. As a result it never developed the necessary mill nor an adequate means of moving the ore to the CRNW Railway terminal. Additionally, since the CRNW was owned by Kennecott, ML was at a distinct disadvantage when it came to freight rates. In 1919 a series of avalanches wiped out the McCarthy Creek aerial tram system and power lines. That stretched the financial resources of the old company to its limits.

Kennecott and the original ML investors formed a new corporation, the Mother Lode Coalitions Mines Company, and resumed production with Kennecott holding 51 per cent of the shares. Kennecott had little interest in the Marvelous vein, which it considered relatively insignificant.

The Kennecott engineers as far back as 1914 had projected that a major copper vein extended from the Bonanza claims well into the adjacent ML claims. It was vital to obtain the rights to those claims in order to avoid a court battle.

As it turned out, the largest pocket of rich copper ore ever to be found was directly underneath the ML upper camp, but the old company did not know this. It was at the 1,250 level of Bonanza. The ML 1,252 stope was comparable to the "big stope" at Jumbo, extending the life of Kennecott by many years. Kennecott connected ML to Bonanza by means of a tunnel at the 800 level to access the upper camp and provide power from the Kennecott power plant. It then drove the 1,250 crosscut, which accessed the main ore body and also made the upper ML camp obsolete. The upper camp was abandoned in 1926. It was destroyed by avalanches shortly thereafter.

An account of what likely occurred exists in the book Legacy of the Chief.

Building the model:

I have always wanted to build a model of Mother Lode in large scale. Once I had written the historic novel Legacy of the Chief which highlights the role of Mother Lode as a part of the Kennecott operation, this relatively unknown camp gained much greater significance to me.

When I began the historic railroad model-building project which was to include Kennecott on one end and Chitina on the other-that part of the railroad known as the "Chitina Local Branch," I expected to build at least a part of historic McCarthy, including the ML power plant, but did not really expect to build the ML itself.

This season Johnny Galauska and I put together a new model-building and painting shop on the Copper Rail Depot complex where it would be possible to do all the things necessary to build and maintain what has become, in my opinion, a world-class historic operating model railroad. This new shop, while small, has enough room for me to draw up the plans in the large scale that I use and do the wood-cutting and painting almost simultaneously. We have assembled all the tools and supplies necessary-after years of working on this elaborate project. Prior to this, much of the work had to be done off-site.

We completed the historic downtown McCarthy model, including the Kennicott River trestle, by mid-September. The part on display would include the depot two-bay locomotive repair and storage barn, the drug store block, the Golden block, the ML power plant and another interesting building which turned out to be the ML railroad warehouse.

The ML railroad warehouse

Both of these structures were painted in the same green-with-white-trim that ML had used originally. I found out about the ML railroad warehouse by phoning Al Swalling, to ask him about that particular structure. He confirmed the color and ownership. Al was in charge of maintenance of all the railroad structures except the bridges along all 196 miles of the railway during the 1930s. He has proved to be an incredible asset, holding a wealth of memories that has proved invaluable in moving this project along.

It seemed only logical to complete the circuit by including the ML upper camp, but where could I place so large a model? A space directly above and to the left of the model of the Kennecott mill appeared ideal. It was large enough for up to 12 feet of model and the buildings could be placed high enough to give the impression of an upper camp mine site.

This would serve the model well because many people confuse the Kennecott mill for the actual mine site, which it is not. Those sites are all at least three miles away, and 2,500 to 3,900 feet in elevation above Kennecott. Now I would finally have one of the mine sites on display so people could better visualize the true complexity of Kennecott.

ML is an ideal upper camp for model-building purposes-not too large, but it does include a barracks complex, a tram terminal, a boiler room, small office building, and a mine adit snow shed, including a long waste-oretram,  with a blacksmith shop next to the high-grade tram. Like all the other sites it was built along steep slopes with barely enough room to support the large structures. It literally hung off a mountainside. I made no attempt to portray the mountainside, but when one looks up at this model, the mind tends to fill in the details.

We completed the historic McCarthy model project on September 20th and immediately began planning the new ML project. I took the few historic photos I had and did some calculations for size of the structures. Because no photos of the north face of the complex have ever surfaced, I made some decisions as to the likely construction of that side and proceeded with the drawings. These were completed in two days. As with all the other buildings, we built this one with 1/4 inch plywood and plexi-glass windows. The camp had no painted buildings. Some were tarpaper-covered. We treated them accordingly. The others were bare wood. These are varnished to a rich color. The support structure under the tram terminal is treated in a rich, dark tone, as is the trestle-work under the waste ore rail tramway. All the other supports are in a light color, the same as the tram terminal, large barrack, and the snow sheds and blacksmith shop. I wired this complex with internal and external lighting--just like all the other models we have built.

It is quite a process to build models such as this, especially when there are no existing prototypes. While constructing the barrack I realized that the upper one was of a typical Kennecott design. That would have been the part that Kennecott built when it expanded into ML in 1920. The remaining buildings were probably built by the old company, although the tram head structure is quite substantial and appears to be a Kennecott rebuild. The boiler plant was definitely a late Kennecott addition-probably because they more than doubled the capacity of the man-camp from perhaps 35 originally to a 75-man camp. This was an impressive camp worthy of the name Kennecott.

The final product was completed in early November. Because of a late winter, it was still warm enough to install the model in place above the mill where it now sits on display. Johnny Galauska did the wood work, plexi-glass cutting and placement and all the painting and varnishing. I took his pieces and did the assembly work. This model now exists as a permanent part of the rich history of Kennecott and its Copper River & Northwestern Railway.