The Kennecott Mine was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The old buildings have certainly seen better days, but when I was last in Kennecott in 2007, the NPS had started to shore up some up some of the buildings. In the past four years, a lot of work had been done. The Park Service has moved into the recently renovated Company Store – Post Office building, and several smaller buildings are now occupied by Wrangell Air & some guide services.

I spent a lot of time crawling around the new cribbing under the buildings, and I went into a couple of smaller buildings that were under current renovation. For a history buff like myself, it was cool to see the work being done.

Now, it turns out I wasn’t as alone out there in the ghost town as I had originally thought. I knew that there were construction workers out at their camp … which included a motor home… and it would appear that someone was keeping an eye on me. When I had finally satisfied my construction curiosity, I went on about my hike around the historic buildings. A truck suddenly showed up, I waved to the driver and received a wave back. He then proceeded to go into every building that I looked into, and walk around all the cribbing that I had poked around earlier. Either he had very similar interests as myself, or he had been watching my every move, and wanted to make sure I hadn’t run off with a miter saw, or set plastic explosives under the cribbing.

I have to admit… it was a very nice miter saw, but I never laid a finger on it.