Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve - Chitina Ranger Station (U.S. National Park Service)

NPS Photo

The Chitina Ranger Station 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

Chitina Ranger Station
Chitina, Alaska
907-823-2205

Memorial Day to End of August:
Thursday - Monday 9:00am - 5:30pm

Chitina Ranger Station is a must stop for anyone visiting Chitina or venturing down the McCarthy Road to Kennecott. In the comfort of this historic log cabin, you can watch the 22-minute park movie "Crown of the Continent", and view the many photos that depict early life in Chitina. Hikers can obtain information regarding backcountry routes, file trip plans, and obtain bear resistant food containers. Federal subsistence fishing permits and fishwheel registration is available at this location.

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

	Chitina Ranger Station (3 Photos) Images of the Chitina Ranger Station View Album \| View Slideshow

Chitina Ranger Station (3 Photos)