One of America’s least-visited national parks, Wrangell–St. Elias deserves a lot more attention. Alas, the park is hard to get to (requiring a slow drive down a super-bumpy road or a flight in), and though there are several guide companies at the ready, hiking or organizing a backpacking adventure within the park has much more of a DIY component than, say, Denali. But the day-trippers who go—and stay at the hotels in the tiny former mining towns of McCarthy or Kennicott—always talk up the wonder of a visit to Kennecott Mines (yes, spelled differently than the town and neighboring glacier). Go on a guided tour of the mine buildings, and find out what it took to work and live deep in the Alaskan wilderness in the 1900s.
