McCarthy historic main street
— a town the century forgot to take with it.
Not only on a wall.
McCarthy historic main street, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A short wooden main street at the end of the McCarthy Road, inside the largest national park in the United States. Population in single digits in winter, a few dozen in summer. The buildings are 1910s mill-town stock from the Kennecott copper years, hand-kept rather than restored. The Kennicott River footbridge is the only way in. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
McCarthy sits at the foot of the Wrangell-St. Elias range, inside the largest national park in the United States at roughly 13.2 million acres. The town grew up in the 1900s as the service settlement for the Kennecott Copper Corporation mill five miles up the road, providing the bars, hotels, and restaurants the company camp prohibited. Year-round population is in the single digits. Summer population swells to a few dozen with seasonal staff, lodge crews, and bush-flight operators.
The main street is wood, not stone, which is the point. The buildings are 1910s mill-town stock, hand-kept rather than restored to museum finish, with old plank sidewalks and tin roofs that read the weather. The Kennecott copper mill itself, five miles up the road, is the National Historic Landmark with its red-painted 14-story concentration mill against the white face of the Kennicott Glacier. McCarthy is the town that fed the mill and outlasted it.
Access is the McCarthy Road, a 60-mile gravel route from Chitina that follows an abandoned railbed and is known for slow driving and occasional tire trouble. The road ends at the Kennicott River, where visitors leave their vehicles and cross a pedestrian footbridge into town. A shuttle van runs the five miles up to Kennecott. The summer season is roughly mid-May through mid-September; most businesses close for winter and bush flights become the primary access.
