COPPER RIVER PEOPLE: An Afternoon With The Late Jim McKinley, Ahtna Traditional Chief

COPPER RIVER COUNTRY JOURNAL 

Tales of Our History & People 

Traditional Chief Jim McKinley  

 At His Cabin On A Hill In Copper Center 

Born in the Gold Rush, Jim McKinley Was An Expert On Ahtna History 

When Ahtna Traditional Chief Jim McKinley died on June 17th, 1991, his death signaled an end to an era. 

Jim McKinley had been born at the height of the Gold Rush, on May 3rd, 1899, in Copper Center. 

In his later years, he led a simple, dignified life in his small log cabin overlooking the entrance to Copper Center, on a curve along the Richardson. On a fine summer day, you'd often see him on his chair, outside his cabin door, watching people go by. Keeping track of his ever-changing world. 

Jim McKinley's life was a chronicle of the history of the Copper Valley. 

One afternoon, the Country Journal went to visit and to take some photographs of what he valued and how he wanted to be seen in the future. 

The cabin (which has since been vandalized and scorched by fires) was tidy and sparse. There was a shelf by his table, with a bag of sugar, and a toaster. His house had electricity. The inside walls were lined, as so many cabins of that time, with painted board.  

Jim McKinley lived a very long and productive life, full of hard work, triumphs and tragedy. His life told the story of how the Copper Valley changed over 90 years.  

As a very young boy, Jim went to school in Copper Center in 1903. An early flu epidemic in 1906, which hit the people of Copper Center very hard, took his grandfather. 

Jim McKinley remembered a boat coming up the Copper River in 1907, for the very first time. (Steamboats briefly ran the river from 1907 to 1911, and were used in the construction of the Kennecott Mines.) 

In 1908, a Russian Orthodox Church was built in Copper Center. The church was very important to the Ahtna people. It was called St. Michael's, and was located near the long-abandoned and recently demolished Copper Center schoolhouse.

The next year, 1909, he traveled by steamboat to Chitina; there wasn't a road back then.

In 1910, when he was eleven, Jim and his family moved to Upper Tonsina, where they spent the winter, coming back to Copper Center that summer to dipnet. By 1912, when he was 13, the first fish wheel was built in the Copper Valley. 

Good fortune came in 1913, when his family hunted for live foxes, and got huge monetary returns. Fox furs were high fashion back then. Jim remembered a pelt could bring up to $525 a fox. 

Another highly desirable commodity was salmon. There were big salmon canneries on the Copper River by the canyon, and Jim went down there to work, dip netting fish and selling them for 8 cents apiece. 

But in 1919, the devastating Spanish Flu pandemic swept through the Copper Valley. It killed a large number of Ahtna people. 

By 1920, Jim McKinley had gone on to work at Paxson. Then he worked on the Copper River Northwest Railway to Kennicott, trapping in the winter. In 1921, he was working on the Alaska Road Commission, the precursor of the current Department of Transportation.

In 1923, thinking that President Warren G. Harding would come up the Richardson Highway on an official visit, he was sent out to "groom" the Richardson Highway, which was still almost nothing more than a trail. The president never made it up the highway; he traveled on the Alaska Railroad instead. 

The Roaring Twenties were a heady time for Jim McKinley. In 1923, with local roads becoming more reliable, Jim's dad bought him a Model T. And then he married a woman from Knik, Ellafina Joe and got more work, in 1924, on the Copper River Railway in Chitina. 

In 1929, working at a cannery in Valdez, he met Bill Egan, who later became governor of Alaska. He spent the 1930s and 1940s trapping in winter, doing road work, and working for mining camps. 

An ardent Christian, Jim McKinley served as pastor of Copper Center Chapel for many years.