Chititu Historic Mining Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

Region 11 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

Inventory Unit Description: The Chititu Historic Mining Landscape is a historic vernacular landscape that exemplifies the evolution of placer mining in Alaska, advancing through a number of discrete stages and employing a broad range of technologies and equipment. Chititu is situated in eastern Alaska, on the south-eastern edge of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, just south of the Nizina River, and about fifteen air miles south east of McCarthy AK. Chititu Creek runs into the Nizina River, whereas Rex and White Creeks converge at an area known as the confluence to create Chititu Creek. Blygh gulch and Jolly Gulch are tributaries to White Creek. Gold was the primary ore on the Chititu Creek drainage, although copper and silver were found in smaller quantities as well. The landscape is locally significant under Criterion A and D and meets all the criteria for a district under the multiple property nomination “Historic Properties associated with Mineral Development in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska, 1898-1942” (Bleakley, 2006). The landscapes areas of significance are Exploration/Settlement and Industry, its period of significance is 1903 to 1942. Although the landscape is in poor condition, it maintains its integrity through the collective contribution of its many extant buildings, structures, sites and objects. Most mining in the drainage was placer mining, carried out on the stream floodplain and adjoining benches. Starting with little more than a shovel and a gold pan, miners subsequently ground-sluiced promising creek bottoms and hydraulic mined the adjoining benches, although if the overburden was rocky or too deep, shafts and adits were sometimes utilized to get at the gold-bearing river gravels beneath the benches. Eventually claim consolidation and corporate ownership of the mining operations led to increased investment and more advanced and transformative placer mining technologies, the results of which are most evident in the contemporary landscape of the Chititu drainage. While independent miners usually built seasonal residences near their claims, the corporations eventually established several larger camps within the district such as ‘Koppustown’ and Chititu Camp. They also developed and maintained an extensive local transportation system, joining their mines and camps via trails and roads to the regional transportation network which connected with the nearest communities of McCarthy and Chitina.

Chititu Historic Mining Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

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