Chitina Log CabinChitina 
Visitor Contact Station

Services

The Chitina Visitor Contact Station provides information about the park and the McCarthy Road. It is open Thursdays through Mondays during the summer months only. Explore the exhibits and watch the 22-minute park movie. There is also a 10 minute slide show on the Chitina Valley offered, during the summer months only.

Services available in Chitina include a post office, gas station, store, tire repair, cafe and payphone.

Chitina Ranger Station

The log cabin station is decorated with historic photographs featuring the town of Chitina as a transportation hub, "where the rails meet the trails." Trains, stagecoaches, dog sleds, and steamboats all passed through Chitina on their way to the mining and commerce centers of Alaska during Chitina's boom years, 1910-1938.

The heyday of Chitina (pronounced Chit-nuh) was directly tied to the operation of the Kennecott mines and the Copper River and Northwestern Railway. The railroad was built to haul copper ore from the Kennecott mines to Cordova. Chitina provided an intermediate stop for the trains and their passengers.

The 1910 log cabin, now the ranger station, was one of many built in the town of Chitina around that time. it was constructed for J.C. Martin, the local manager of the Ed S. Orr Stage company. The initials "J.C.M." are still clearly scrawled on the wooden ceiling. The home was praised in the local newspaper as "one of the neatest and most substantial log cabin cottages in Alaska." A local crew of craftsmen, working for the National Park Service, rehabilitated the cabin in 1991-92 to make it so again.
Inside the Visitor Center Orr Cabin Today

The Orr stage company had its headquarters in Valdez and offered transportation to Fairbanks over the Valdez-Fairbanks stage route. When the railroad came to Chitina, Orr expanded service to that area to connect train passengers with destinations in the interior of Alaska, shortening the trip to Fairbanks to seven days.

The community of Chitina is located at the end of the paved Edgerton Highway and the beginning of the gravel McCarthy Road, one of only two roads into Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The 61-mile McCarthy Road is built on the bed of the historic Copper River and Northwestern Railway.

The Chitina Welcoming Committee! photo by N. Hannan
Chitina Welcoming Committee!

 Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve
106.8 Richardson Highway, PO Box 439
Copper Center, AK 99573
(907) 822-5234
e-mail us: wrst_interpretation@nps.gov