Daily Sitka Sentinel from Sitka, Alaska • Page 8

Page it, Daily Sitka Sentinel, Sitka, Alaska, Tuesday, May Feds Study Ways to Preserve Remnants of Big Mining Boom KENNECOTT, Alaska (AP) The bright red buildings perched above the rubble field of the Kennicott Glacier in the Wrangell Mountains are silent nowadays. Long gone are the iron men and huge machines that burrowed and dug and tore the earth. The only sound now is the wind. While America endured the Great War and the Great Depression, the sturdy buildings housed clanking, roaring contraptions to process one of the richest copper deposits the world has ever known. Now they are little more than a ghost town, an out-of-the-way stop for a few hardy tourists and dedicated history buffs as the federal government mulls ways to preserve one of the most significant, but largely forgotten, chapters of Alaska's past.

The Kennecott Mines which set up a camp and offices in 1906, took its name from the glacier. But the mining company, which still operates in Utah, misspelled the glacier's name with a second Between 1911 and 1935, the Kennecott copper deposit located some 235 miles east of Anchorage yielded 4.6 million tons of ore that was refined into 591,535 tons of copper and 9 million ounces of silver. The discovery of vast copper deposits in Chile and the economic turmoil of the Depression killed Kennecott, even though there may be millions of tons of high-grade ore left in the sawtooth ridge behind the processing facilities. Except for 3,000 acres of private land around Kennecott, the magnificent mountains in almost every direction are part of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Preserve.

That precludes any new mining claims in the region, but park service officials say the status of patented claims and those on the private land is unclear. What is clear is that the Kennicott mine works and nearby town of McCarthy represented a considerable triumph of technology in the raw wilderness of Alaska 75 years ago. Scavengers have made off with virtually everything of value. But a stroll through the ruins evokes memories of America as an industrial giant. The Trenton Iron the Pelton Water Wheel Co.

of San Francisco and New York, and Byron Jackson Iron APE A Delegates Vote To Restructure Union JUNEAU (AP) Delegates to the annual convention of the Alaska Public Employees Association have approved a series of changes to rr restructure the union. Some 120 delegates of APEA voted in Anchorage over the weekend to scrap the current system under which the organization is run by an executive director and executive committee. The union now will be run by a business manager hired by a 13- member board of directors all elected by direct popular vote of the membership. Delegates at the annual Statewide General Assembly of the union also voted, in effect, to dissolve the assembly, to have the union president elected directly and to give members the right to repeal any unwanted by-laws. Future dues increases also would require members' approval.

"I think the delegates approved every plank of the proposed reforms. I'm not aware of there being anything proposed that wasn't approved," APEA counsel John Gaguine said Monday. APEA leaders proposed the reforms in an attempt to woo back 6,800 members of the union's general government unit. Those members earlier this month voted in a representation election to oust the APEA. The new Alaska State Employees Association and Public Employees Local 71 each got more votes than APEA.

APEA planned to appeal the election results this week. If the results stand, the general government unit members will vote in a runoff'between ASEA and Local 71. APEA, 'which is trailing Local 71 by three votes, would be shut out. Gaguine said regardless of the outcome of the general government vote, APEA intends to implement the new reforms. The union hopes to seek nominations for the new board of directors and a popularly elected president within several weeks, and shift completely to the new structure after an organization vote within two months.

In the interim, members voted to name Bruce Main, a correctional officer at the Hiland Mountain correctional center in Eagle River, to be president. He replaces Tim Beck, who took over after former president Harry Dullinger quit in December. Main will serve until the full membership votes on a new president. Works of San Francisco are among the names stamped proudly on mammoth metalworks in the bewildering maze of machinery. The equipment mostly was hauled in by river sternwheelers and horse-drawn sleds before the now- defunct Cooper River Northwestern Railway reached the mill.

Once mining and milling started, Kennecott boasted its own machine shop capable of crafting pipes, pulleys, and anything else needed. Many of them still litter the floors and bins of the shop. "They could build anything there, from the smallest, little part to 10-to 20- ton machines," says Bud Seltenreich, who grew up in McCarthy, about five miles away. As a boy, he used to hang around the shop, picking up skills that served him well later as an aircraft mechanic and eventually as chief of aviation maim tenance for the Federal Aviation Administration. "There was a lot of guys who knew a lot of things.

I learned a lot from them," says Seltenreich, who now lives in Anchorage. Historian Lone Janson says there were noticable differences between Kennecott and McCarthy. "Kennecott was the company town; staid and very proper, where the neat red and white houses were the homes of company officials. McCarthy was the booming, roistering miners' and railroaders' town; wide open and roaring," Janson says in her book, "The Copper Spike." That's pretty much the way Seltenreich remembers it. The youngest of three brothers, Seltenreich says he was the first child born in the Kennecott-McCarthy area.

His parents came to the area in 1913 to try to cash in on the gold rush in the Shushana area, about 50 miles northeast of McCarthy. "They thought it might be something like Dawson," he says, referring to the Canadian Gold Rush community 150 miles farther east. Instead, they ended up in McCarthy, running a laaridry and a meat market. By the time Seltenreich was born two years later, McCarthy was a prosperous community of 300-400 people. Suspect in Hijacking Captured in Colombia BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) The Colombian navy said a convicted kidnapper who used a toy hand grenade to hijack a 1 Colombian airliner was captured this morning in a swamp near the international airport of the Caribbean coast city of Cartagena.

The suspect was found at dawn today hiding in a swamp on the edge of the airport, the navy said. He was being examined by doctors. The navy said the suspect, Gonzalo Carreno Nieto, used a toy gun four years ago to kidnap an uncle. Carreno spent nine years in prison after being charged with murder, lawyer Guillermo Garcia said. He eventually was found innocent and set free, but had become emotionally Films with History Winners At the Cannes Film Festival CANNES, France (AP) --Films with a sense of history, including Danish director Bilie August's "Pelle the Conquerer" and Clint Eastwood's "Bird," dominated the 41st annual Cannes Film Festival.

"Pelle the Conquerer" on Monday won the Golden Palm award as best film. American actor Forest Whitaker took the best actor prize for portraying jazz great Charlie Parker in the film "Bird," directed by Eastwood. Three performers shared the best actress award American Barbara Hershey, South African Linda Mvusi and 13-year-old Jodhi May of Britain -for the British film "A World Apart." The film about an adolescent's awakening to South Africa's apartheid system also won the festival's Special Jury Grand Prize. August, who also wrote "Pelle the Conquerer," received his prize from French film star Gerard Depardieu and Italian director Ettore Scola, president of the 10-member festival jury. "Bird," which opens next week in France, received a great deal of media attention during the festival because Eastwood was in Cannes and because the French public has a long-term love affair with American jazz.

Saxophonist Parker, whose bebop swing influenced a generation of jazz players, is' well- known in France three decades years after his death. Whitaker, who also appeared in "Platoon" and "The Color of Money," was joined on stage to accept the award by Eastwood. "Bird" also won the technical excellence award in recognition of its soundtrack. GROSS-ALASKA THEATRES T44 VHS TAPE RENTALS NEW VIDEOS: Running Man and Baby Boom COLISEUM TWIN THEATRE 3l5 Lincoln Street 747-6920 CINEMA I SHOW TIMES: Nightly Sat Sun Matinee 3:10 RETURN TO SNOWY RIVER PARTn CINEMA II SHOWTIMES: Nightly Frt Sat 7:15 9:10 Sal Sun Matinee 3:15 Summer Schedule starts June 1. Two Shows Nightly! Video 144 Open til llpm on week nights Midnight Friday Saturday.

GROSS ALASKA THEATRES unbalanced in prison and turned to crime and drug abuse, Garcia told the radio network Caracol. I All 128 passengers and the three flight attendants were released shortly after the hijacking began. The three-member cockpit crew returned safely. No one was hurt during the 11-hour hijacking of the Avianca Boeing 727 that ended Monday night in Cartagena, a city on the Caribbean coast 400 miles north of Bogota. Police were searching for the man today.

He was described as blond, 5-foot-5, in his 30s and wearing sports clothes. Officials said the passenger list identified the man as Albeiro Jimenez, a Colombian, but that it could be a phony name. The hijacker claimed he was dying of cancer, demanded $100,000 and to be taken to Cuba, authorities said. The man never received the money and the pilot persuaded him to return to Colombia. "He wanted the $100,000 so he could spend the last few days of his life happily," pilot Luis Eduardo Gutierrez told a news conference in Cartagena.

"He told us he had nothing to lose and that he would explode a grenade he carried in his hand if we failed to obey his instructions." The jetliner had left Medellin at 8:09 a.m. (9:09 a.m. EDT) Monday on a flight to Bogota, Colombia's capital 250 miles southeast. Shortly after takeoff, passenger Javier Robledo said, the hijacker gave a note to a female flight attendant. The passengers and the flight attendants left the plane when it returned to the Medellin airport, said Yezid Castano, the Colombian Civil Aeronautics Administration chief.

With only Gutierrez, the copilot and a flight engineer left on board, the hijacker ordered the plane to Panama. The plane landed at Omar Torrijos International Airport, outside Panama City. A three-man negotiating team approached the plane and spoke through the intercom after the hijacker forced the crew to cut off communications with the control tower. The man demanded $100,000, said Capt. Miguel von Seidlitz, airport security chief.

"We explained to him that because of our financial crisis that was impossible. And he understood," said von Seidlitz said. After the plane was refueled during its three hours on the ground, it left for Oranjestad, Aruba, where it landed at the Reina Beatrix International Airport "Our most difficult moments came in Aruba when the hijacker realized he couldn't get the money there, either," said Gutierrez, the pilot. "I told him that he could probably get it in Cartagena, and he agreed we go there." As the aircraft reached the end of a runway at Cartagena's Rafael Nunez International Airport and turned around to approach the terminal, the hijacker activated a lever that opened the plane's rear stairway, Gutierrez said. The man exited the cockpit and disappeared.

"Not a big town, but quite a wealthy says. The town boasted three big saloons, five good-sized hotels, five restaurants, two general stores, three taxicab companies, a movie house and electricity in the major businesses. "It was very metropolitan. We had everything you could need," he says. With regular train service and worldwide telegraph connections, McCarthy and Kennecott were more in touch with the world than most frontier towns, especially in Alaska.

Seltenreich says he remembers a drama theater, boxing ring and a local baseball team and of course a school, where he went through the tenth-grade with fewer than a dozen other Although most of the mine laborers lived in faunkhouses at Kennecott, many spent their free time in McCarthy. "It was called the little Reno of Alaska," complete with gambling and prostitution, Seltenreich says. "I had a good education when I was young," he says with a grin. "I knew all the tricks of the trade." Among the many jobs he had as a boy was the task of chopping kindling and getting fires going in the local brothels early in the morning. "It was a great place to grow up," Seltenreich says.

"Lots of op- portanities. I always had a jingle in my pockets." He never worked at Kennecott, but he says those who did liked-it. "In those people didn't dislike their jobs," he says. The small hospital in Kennecott where Seltenreich was born still stands, although tons of gravel from an adjacent stream have invaded rooms on the lower floor. A few broken medicine bottles litter the cabinets, and the attic floor is strewn with old medical records.

In 1921, Dr. E.L. Anderson prescribed morphine for Louie Renter for an undisclosed ailment. In 1926, Dr. J.M.C.

Batts treated one Fred W. johansen for "contusions of the fingers." The two-story white clapboard building stands out among the rich red hues of the mine buildings. In the general store, business records have been scattered like a deck of cards out of control. A 1923 pay scale lists blacksmiths at $5.75 a day; roustabouts at $4.75. Room and board was $1.45 a day.

A hospital room was only 8 cents a day. Jello was 11 cents a package; fruitcake mix 40 cents. RyCrisp crackers went for 20, 35 and 40 cents, depending on the size of the box. The 191-mile train ride to Cordova set passengers back nearly a week's pay, or $19.50 one-way. Across the street towers the 14-story concentration mill built into the side of the hill It is virtually Intact except for the roof.

The imposing structure contains 200,000 board feet of lumber. Inside, huge crushers swallowed ore that was taken thousands of feet down the ridge by trams. Everything seems well preserved. Filthy, worn coveralls, gloges and leggings lie in a corner as if just peeled off by a miner headed for a night of revelry in McCarthy. The burlap bags used to ship ore concentrates still clutter lower level bins.

The first tram linking the mines with the mill was finished in 1908, three years before the railroad reached Kennecott. The first shipment of 1,200 tons of ore, valued at $250,000, went to Cordova by rail on April 8,1911. Production and profits peaked in 1916 but labor shortages during World War I marked the first sign of trouble for Kennecott as output dropped by two- thirds. The war's end and a government- mandated copper price of 23.5 cents a pound sparked a revival in the early 1920s But by then, the miners no longer could count on ore that was 65- to 70 percent pure. Lacking access to coal that would have allowed the ore to be smelted on location, Kennecott's future dimmed.

Few Comments Given On Pioneers Homes By LARRY PERSILY Associated Press Writer JUNEAU (AP) People have offered few comments on proposed major changes at state Pioneers Homes, but the public will have another chance when the Governor's Interim Commission on Health Care meets Thursday. In five days of public teleconferences around the state last week, the commission collected testimony from about 25 people, said Jay Livey, Department of Health and Social Services spokesman and staff aide to the commission. Only two written comments had been received as of Monday afternoon. The commission recommends in its draft report that the Legislature eliminate the 15-year Alaska residency requirement for Pioneers Home admissions. Dropping the residency requirement would allow the state to collect federal Medicaid funds for many of the residents.

The report also recommends that Pioneers Home residents pay the full cost of their care, instead of the 10 percent to 25 percent they now pay. The commission will a final chance for public testimony at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Thursday on the statewide teleconference network. Commissioners will meet at Humana Hospital in Anchorage, with legislative information offices to carry the teleconference across the state.

A second meeting is set for Friday at Humana Hospital for commissioners to consider public comments of the past two weeks and prepare their final report for submission to the governor and legislators. Operation of homes at Anchorage, Fairbanks, Palmer, Sitka, Ketchikan and Juneau is expected to cost the state about $25 million in the next fiscal year. "Alaska's current nursing home policy is unfair," the report says of the residency requirement and low rates. Wrong, says a Kenai woman. The report is unfair, she said in her letter to the commission.

"It's a shame everyone on the Governor's Interim Commission on Health Care couldn't walk in our shoes for a while," said Nina Selby, whose 72- year-old husband has Alzheimer's disease and is on the waiting list for the Palmer Pioneers Home. "As I understand it, Pioneers Homes were established for those of us who have lived here and loved Alaska for over 15 years and want to stay here," she said in her letter. "Or is it to become another Permanent Fund deal where in one year you can have the same advantage as those who have put their lives and roots into this Although the report recommends dropping the 15-year residency requirement, it does not propose an alternative, such as the one year required for other state residency- based programs. One argument for eliminating the long-term residency requirement is that it likely would fail a legal challenge, according to the commission's report. The issue also was raised by Administration Commissioner John Andrews in an April letter to the governor's Office of Management and Budget: "The residency requirement has not been challenged, although conventional wisdom in the legal community seems to view it as only nominally Andrews' letter was in reply to a Management and Budget report recommending Pioneers iHome changes similar to those proposed by the health care commission report.

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