| The colors of Autumn are here but there is a feeling of something not being complete. |
| I want to ask every community member to please help me in our efforts to stop the bollards from going back in at the bridge over the Kennicott River. |
| Please, did we not learn how asserting ownership was a huge mistake on September 11? I hate to see this town remain divided into pieces of separate communities. |
| I am a proud American who loves this beautiful park, and the people who live here. I’m sure if we stop and look at the past history of all the bollards being put in, then being cut down, we can see the need to compromise. Let’s neck the bridge down in width, but leave the bollards out so that 4wheelers and snowmachines can use the bridge. We need the access open for normal use, and for emergencies. |
| I am very disappointed with the National Park Service for being such a bad community member. You have over 11 million acres of land already— will you never stop from taking more? We really need to work with you, not against you. But you have ignored us for years. You use the public process and the Roundtable meetings to go around and over the top of us. This has to stop. |
| I am a mother of four beautiful children and a loving wife who has had to sacrifice 7 of the last 9 years of anniversaries to help pay lawyer’s bills. Our snowmachine and 4wheeler are gone now, sold to try and hold on to our property. Yes, there is an easement through the property, but it is to let people come and go. The rest of the property is used for camping and parking. |
| I hope the experience of 9/11/01 will remind us that asserting ownership does not work. Compromise is the key to hold everything together. I want only proud American people to help in my cause. |
| Thank you for your time, |
| Kelly Syren |
| I tried to phone in to the KCHU radio station to talk about the important concerns over crossing the bridge into our McCarthy Town. I couldn’t get through, we called and called, while the boys did open heart surgery on the old FM radio, doing their best to listen in. If anyone happened to tape the program that day we would very much like to listen. |
| We really love and appreciate the courage of all the folks of McCarthy, and I would say that we can see everybody’s deep plight concerning the road and the bridge. Although it may not touch my family as close as most, as we are sort of “bent” towards the joy that extreme hardship brings, we in every way share in our hearts with you the needs and frustrations that are upon us all. |
| We also have been faced with challenges by Park Service threats of road, bridge and mine closures. It seems they would as soon be rid of us permanently so they could have their own way. |
| It really looks as if they are trying to divide the peoples of McCarthy. The bridge is a good example—and the remarks are literally absurd that Ranger Hunter Sharp has made: |
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Not recognizing any access right-of-way, wanting to deny all access. | |
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Public statements that the NPS wants no local businesses in the park. | |
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Even saying he will fence the park in if he has to. | |
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Wanting no inholders in the park. | |
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Apparently persuading the Department of Transportation to not maintain McCarthy Road access while at the same time wanting to spend $230,000 to restrict our only bridge or access to only “foot-traffic”— causing extreme hardship on persons living in McCarthy and across the river. | |
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All aimed at harassing and dividing the local towns’ people. | |
| At a quick glance all of this makes no sense, knowing that it is the aim and intent of this Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to encourage visitation to the nation’s largest national park. Don’t they want us? Need us? Aren’t we the people that represent the park and its history. Is it not the devotion of the bush pilots, hotel and lodge keepers, the miners, the families that carved out a living 200 miles from town, that form that personal and living touch that visitors come to see here in Historic Alaska?! |
| I DO NOT consider the park service as a person, but rather a ruthless, relentless and uncaring political system of deceptive and harmful motives. They should be our servants, to help us do the things that we know will work for a true Alaska. |
| But, their goal seems to be to eliminate—and their answer is expressed in their actions to rid the park of all “in-dwellers,” doing away with local private business, closing roads and access to private holdings illegally, causing division among the peoples of Kennicott and McCarthy by deception and falsehood. |
| But the inholders are the real people of the Alaskan bush. After those few months of serving the park’s visitors, they alone are left, as the cold winter wind is blowing, and the snow reaches the bridle of a horse. They find the joy of the silent northern lights running wild. A hot cup of coffee at the lodge to help out along the winter trail home. Where, then, are the park officials? The Department of Transportation bridge builders? |
| They will think of us again when winter turns to spring and break-up roars off the rivers. |
| They will make their secret plans to clean house in a big sweep, through harassment, fraud and deceit, as they strive for total power and control. |
| Once they get rid of us, then the roads will open up and become paved, bridges will be built, and fancy parking lots and motor home parks, where you’ll get arrested if you leave the designated walkway or park at the wrong angle with your car. |
| Yes, even though I am new to all of this, it’s easy to see down the trail a little ways. |
| They simply want it all, and you and I are not important. They will install signs that say “don’t touch, just look!” |
| The future? Who are we? Can we survive this onslaught of evil? |
| “A house divided against itself will fall.” |
| This truth is the key. Each one of us has needs and attitudes, and they are none alike, but in our diversity is our power—the power of an unseen resource we know as LOVE. If, when the line is drawn, and the peoples are gathered, the difference will be more than obvious. |
| When greed of power looks across the great chasm before it, and sees the forces of love, great things will soon transpire. |
| God is love. What power is there that can prevail against it? |
| But wait a moment here! |
| What if we start by realizing that love does no harm to its neighbor. This is the unity and the power that must unify the peoples of McCarthy and Kennicott. |
| It’s very obvious that the park service cares nothing for the people that live in the park. Their outreached hand has a club in it—but in the end it will fail! |
| Love, in which we can believe and trust, when put into action among ourselves will become unity and foundation that cares for one another, and makes us strong together. |
| We all need a bridge. Some need it more than others and I need to look at that—what my neighbor needs for his daily subsistence. This should be important to me. Caring is contagious. If you stop and think about those who care for you, it gives you a wonderful feeling. If everybody cared for one another, what a powerful little town McCarthy would be. |
| But, on the other hand, the park personnel would leap with glee if they could cause us to bite and devour one another. It is supposed to be “Government by the people, for the people,” not “Government by the government, against the people.” |
| To sum it up. Yes, the NPS could destroy generations here in McCarthy, Kennicott, Slana and Nabesna by spreading the deadly disease of greed and power through terrorism, harassment and lies. |
| But we need to see the light and realize where the battle really is—IT IS INSIDE US! |
| The challenge is great, but we know that “what we sow, we will reap.” Where bitter seeds are planted, hearts will harden, but a helping hand will make the harvest sweet. |
| The National Park Service has betrayed Alaska. This cannot be good. |
| But you are my neighbor— thank God you’re there—let’s get together and look at us, you and me. Let’s care about you, and then turn together to face the real danger. We could say, “Remember the Alamo,” or even better, “What must I do Lord to be saved?” I do know love is real. It works and never fails. Our survival as a community is challenged, and we love you. |
| Are we naive, outdated, out of tune, out of step, unrealistic and outrageous? I, my wife and 16 children say, “Yes, love is real and it works.” Your challenge is our challenge. We all have the same goal and hope—true preservation. |
| We have received a copy of a letter sent to you by Gary Candelaria of the National Park Service dated July 15, 2002. I would very much like to clarify some facts that Mr. Candelaria has chosen not to fully disclose. |
| During the summer season the footbridge is the only access point for all goods and services to enter the McCarthyKennicott area. As area business people, we spend much of our seasonal budget supporting local services and thus purchase our propane and fuel from the north side of the Kennicott River. The last bollard placed in the bridge forced us to unload our ATV trailer of propane tanks, turn our ATV on its side and our trailers to pass through the bollard, reload trailers, and go purchase our propane. Only to go through the whole process again to get by the obstacle on the return trip. |
| All our fuel oil in 50 gal. barrels must pass over this access. So far this year starting in April we have had to pass across the bridge 5,000 gal. We are working toward 15,000 gal. DEC approved storage but it still costs us 30% more to hire third parties to cross the river from the north side to our side. This cost is because of DOTs’ enforced vision of what this community should be. |
| Over 98% of our dry goods and groceries are freighted across the bridge in the summer. |
| Mr. Cadelaria speaks of “the introduction of these vehicles is negatively impacting visitors’ experience at this site,” but he does not correctly inform you that well over 95% of these vehicles are of local origin. That the Park has increased its’ ATV and truck presence, that several new offices of Guide Services have opened within the Kennicott site. That a great deal of construction is going on within the site. That many people (year around and summer residents of Kennicott) have simply brought their vehicles to the McCarthyKennicott side in order to have easy access to their property. Many seasonal workers at Kennicott bring their vehicles to easily access goods and services in McCarthy. There are now two shuttle services operating from the footbridge, McCarthy and Kennicott with a total of 7 vehicles and hourly schedules. |
| It seems ridiculous that the Park Service is using less than 5% of the vehicular traffic to justify an argument in support of closure. We hope you will not be fooled into taking a position that deletes facts, and subjugates the communities’ obvious needs to the park services’s wishes. |
| Do not lock down this community, stymie natural growth of services to the largest Park in the United States. Kennicott was an industrial site and cannot be seen as some pristine wilderness. We here in the town of McCarthy, where the bulk of the service businesses are growing know this. We are not the wilderness, we are surrounded by it and that 13 million acres is what people come to see. Our community extends 30 miles around us and the DOT should not be in the business of denying rightful access to its’ citizens and the free flow of goods and services to its’ citizens. |
| While it is true there are more vehicles in the McCarthy/ Kennicott corridor than ever before it is a direct result of the [foot] bridge that this has occurred. Residents have been forced to bring multiple vehicles to the south side simply to continue access to our properties. |
| McCarthy Ventures, LLC believes the DOT should be addressing the increased growth in population and services in the McCarthy area and take a proactive stance in the development of this community into a delightful tourist experience as well as a growing mercantile and service entrance into the Wrangell St. Elias National Park. By blocking our ability to grow naturally into this role DOT will be trapped in the elitist role of creating a gated community that only few will be able to afford to live within. |
| We solicit you not to allow this to occur, please do not reinstall any more barriers on these bridges until McCarthy has some freight access. |
| Neil DarishPartner |
| Copper Rail Histories, Inc. |