Area less than one acre NRHP Reference # 79003752 Added to NRHP 26 April 1979 | Built 1917 (1917) Opened 1917 | |
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Location At McCarthy Creek, McCarthy, Alaska | ||
The McCarthy Power Plant is a historic power plant building in the small community of McCarthy, Alaska, in the heart of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It is a three-story wood frame structure with a clerestory roof, located on the banks of McCarthy Creek. It was built in 1917, after the arrival of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway in the area kicked of a building boom. The coal-fired power plant was built to provide electricity for the operation of a tramway and other facilities of the Kennecott mines. Most of the transmission lines and the tramway were destroyed by avalanches in 1919, and other changes made soon afterward made the power plant unnecessary, and its turbine was moved up to Kennecott.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.