Chitina Day Tours & Attractions

The rock cut you’re about to dri­ve through was blast­ed out in the ear­ly 1900’s when the rail­road to the cop­per mines of Ken­ni­cott was being built. The rail­road began in Cor­do­va and fol­lowed the Cop­per Riv­er to cur­rent day Chiti­na before turn­ing through the rock cut and head­ing east towards the Wrangell Moun­tains. In the 1960’s the rail­road hand­ed over the land, and lia­bil­i­ty, to the new­ly estab­lished State of Alas­ka which prompt­ly began…  ...more

If you want to get a true sense of the 13 mil­lion acres with­in Wrangell-St. Elias Nation­al Park — which has a mere 100 miles of road­ways — start with an aer­i­al view. Since 1992, Wrangell Moun­tain Air has been offer­ing safe and fas­ci­nat­ing tours of this remote king­dom, which boasts North Amer­i­ca’s largest assem­blage of glac­i­ers as well as its largest col­lec­tion of peaks above 16,000 feet. Choose from three main tours. 

Want to feel like you’ve stum­bled into an old Indi­ana Jones movie? A rugged cliff-top trail reach­es south from Chiti­na along the Cop­per Riv­er into the gorge of Wood Canyon — offer­ing access to three creeks, the ruins of an old tres­tle, a his­toric train tun­nel and, final­ly, a sandy beach suit­able for camping.

The rock cut you’re about to dri­ve through was blast­ed out in 1909 as a rail­way to sup­ply and sup­port the Ken­necott Cop­per Mines when they were being built. The rail­road began in Cor­do­va and fol­lowed the Cop­per Riv­er to cur­rent day Chiti­na before turn­ing through the rock cut and head­ing east towards the Wrangell Mountains.

There’s a sto­ry about a local pio­neer who in the 1950’s walked the entire way to McCarthy from Cor­do­va. Across the Cop­per Riv­er was a steel cable, the cur­rent bridge hav­ing not been built until 1973.

Chiti­na (pop. 105) came to life almost overnight with arrival of the Cop­per Riv­er & North­west­ern Rail­way on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1910. The rail­way was built to haul ore from Ken­ni­cott Cop­per Mines at McCarthy to Cor­do­va for ship­ment to Seat­tle. Chiti­na became a sup­ply town for both the rail­way and the mine. When the mine closed in 1938, Chiti­na became a ghost town almost overnight. In the 1950s and 1970s, ghosts were paint­ed on some of the old  ...more

How do you fish in a riv­er full of glacial silt? The eas­i­est way is to use the icon­ic fish wheel — long asso­ci­at­ed with Alas­ka Native sub­sis­tence. See them in action in the Cop­per Riv­er near Chitina.