The bridge existed for one reason: copper. In the early 1900s some of the richest copper ore on earth was found in the mountains at Kennecott, and the Alaska Syndicate — J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim family — set out to haul it to tidewater. They hired Michael Heney, the “Irish Prince” who had helped build the White Pass railroad, to run a line 196 miles down the Copper River to an ice-free port. Heney chose the spot, named it Cordova in 1906 after an old Spanish name for the harbor, and the town was founded in 1908 as the railroad’s ocean terminus. From 1911 to 1938, Kennecott copper rolled down the rails and onto ships bound south.
Cordova sits at the end of the road — which is to say, off it entirely. No highway connects it to the rest of Alaska; you arrive by ferry across Prince William Sound or by floatplane, the way people always have. The town wraps around a small-boat harbor on Orca Inlet, under Eyak Mountain and beside Lake Eyak, in a temperate rainforest that takes on something like a hundred and sixty inches of rain a year. Beyond it spread the Copper River Delta — one of the great shorebird stopovers on the continent — and the glaciers, and the Sound.
Why People Visit Cordova
Cordova rewards travelers who want the real, working edge of Alaska: a fishing fleet at the dock, glaciers and a great river delta within reach, world-class birding and salmon, and a town you have to make an effort to reach. Bring rain gear and time.
