Wrangell-St. Elias is a vast national park that rises from the ocean all the way up to 18,008 ft. At 13.2 million acres, the park is the largest in the United States. Within this wild and rugged landscape, people continue to live off the land as they have done for centuries.
We had the distinct pleasure of traveling to Alaska for an 8-day excursion to develop and write Audio Description narratives for 26 sites and five rooms of internal exhibits (spread through three historic buildings) at Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. Located within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the landmark contains several copper ore mines and the abandoned mill town that was built to extract copper from the ore.
The audio-described tour is available in the National Park Service’s NPS app which contains tools to explore more than 400 national parks nationwide, complete with interactive maps, tours of park places, on-the-ground accessibility information, and much more to plan your national park adventures before and during your trip.
Contact us to explore Parks Audio Description for your next project.
Here are a few samples of the narratives we wrote for this project:
Machine Shop and Mill Building
The Machine Shop served as a hub for all the Kennecott operations. Many unique, site-built pieces of equipment remain. Equipment that needed repair traveled from the top of the mill building on a narrow-gauge service tram, crossing the main railway tracks by way of a drawbridge. Built directly into the steep, rocky hillside, the base of the 14-story tall Concentration Mill Building stretches more than 200 feet (60 m) along the east side of the main gravel road, north of the wood plank bridge over National Creek. Gazing up to the top of the mill, a myriad of windows appear like so many empty, black cubby holes in the faces of the stacked buildings towering high above.
Power Plant
Located at the northern end of town along the west side of the main gravel road, four towering smoke stacks rise from the three-story, 13,218 square foot (4,025 square meter) Power Plant. Power played a critical role in Kennecott’s self-sufficiency. Industry requires power, and generating power in the wilderness, on a sizable scale, required imagination and herculean effort. The plant provided power and steam heat to the entire town. Steam traveled to outlying buildings through underground wooden conduits. These were often built under wooden sidewalks, keeping them free of snow and ice in the winter. Water for the steam boilers was diverted from Bonanza Creek, north of the town. Power was also transmitted over a high-tension line to Bonanza and then across the hill to Jumbo.
Mill and Railroad Depot
Kennecott Mill Town contains numerous buildings that all helped the Kennecott Corporation and its workers to mine, refine, and transport copper ore from the Alaskan wilderness. This one-story red and white wood framed structure sits on the east side of the main gravel road, at the southern-most end of the wide wooden bridge spanning National Creek. The wood plank decking of the bridge surrounds the roughly 25-foot (7.5 m) wide by 15 foot (4.5 m) deep depot building. There’s a pair of double red and white doors on the right half of the structure, and an eight-foot (2.5 m) long wooden park bench to the left of the doors under a white, double hung window.
Hospital, Bunkhouse and National Creek
There is very little paint left on the ramshackle and partially-collapsed two-story Hospital building. What is left is barely white. Impassable wooden steps rise to a dilapidated, covered porch along the north side of the building. Broken windows and frames hang askew throughout. The entire back, eastern half of the structure has totally collapsed. Metal screens in the windows along the south side of the building prevent access to the crumbling structure, totally clogged with tons of rocky washout from National Creek when it floods. The National Creek Bunkhouse is a broken down, red and white, two-story, dormered structure located behind the train depot on the south rocky banks of National Creek. Broken windows and frames hang askew throughout.
Contact us to explore Parks Audio Description for your next project.