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| Title | Bonanza Mine, near Kennecott, ca. 1912 |
| Photographer | Thwaites, John E. (John Edward), 1863-1940 |
| Date | ca. 1912 |
| Notes | PH Coll 247.864 |
| Contextual Notes | In the summer of 1900, prospectors Clarence Warner and "Tarantula Jack" Smith were exploring the east side of the Kennicott Glacier. As they drew closer to the limestone-greenstone contact, they could not miss the magnificent green cliffs of copper perches on the mountainside. Their discovery was staked as the "Bonanza mine outcrop". A young and ambitious mining engineer, Stephen Birch, later purchased this claim. Birch was financially backed by some of the most influential families of the time, including the Morgans and Guggenheims. Originally called the Alaska Syndicate, it became the Kennecott Copper Corporation in 1915. (The mining company was named after the Kennicott Glacier. It was misspelled as Kennecott, with an "e" instead of an "i".) Along with the building of the mine and mill works, the corporation controlled the entire transportation route. It funded 196 miles of railroad from Kennecott to Cordova, and organized a steamship line that shipped the ore to the smelters in Tacoma, Washington. From the first shipment of high grade copper ore in 1911 to the final shipment in 1938, approximately $200 million worth of copper traveled the Copper River & Northwestern Railway to the port of Cordova. At its peak, the Kennecott Copper Corporation employed about 600 people: approximately 300 in the mill camp, where the ore was processed, and 200-300 lived in the mines up the mountain.
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| Subjects (LCTGM) | Kennecott Copper Mine (Alaska); Kennecott Copper Corporation--Facilities--Alaska--Kennicott; Kennicott Glacier (Alaska) |
| Subjects (LCSH) | Copper mines and mining--Alaska--Kennicott |
| Location Depicted | United States--Alaska--Kennicott |
| Digital Collection | John E. Thwaites Photographs |
| Order Number | THW375 |
| Ordering Information | To order a reproduction, inquire about permissions, or for information about prices see: http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcollections/services/reproduction-info
Please cite the Order Number when ordering. |
| Negative Number | THWAITES 247.864 |
| Repository | University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division |
| Repository Collection | John E. Thwaites Photograph Collection. PH Coll 247
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| Object Type | Photograph |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from a photographic print using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL at 100 dpi in JPEG format at compression rate 3 and resized to 768x512 ppi. 2003. |
