Wrangell-St. Elias, tucked away in the southeastern corner of Alaska, holds the impressive title of being the largest U.S. National Park and Preserve, with over 20,000 square miles of pristine wilderness. There’s really only one town with year-round residents that sits within Wrangell-St. Elias’ massive footprint—the teeny town of McCarthy, Alaska, which once served as the Sin City for the nearby mining complex of Kennicott.
McCarthy is the best homebase to explore everything that Wrangell-St. Elias has to offer, with a convenient location near all of its outdoor adventures, from ice climbing to whitewater rafting, and all of the amenities a traveler would need, including stores, restaurants, and hotels. However, getting to McCarthy, Alaska isn’t the most straightforward, requiring multiple modes of transportation and driving on a 60 mile gravel road, littered with antique railroad spikes.
Sounds a bit scary? It is! But, luckily, there are a few options of traveling to this remote corner of the country. Here’s everything you need to know about how to get to McCarthy, Alaska, the gateway to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
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What is McCarthy, Alaska?
If you’re doing research on how to get to McCarthy, you might already have a general idea of the town’s history. But, if not, here’s a brief background on this quirky corner of Alaska.
In the early 1900s, a group of investors and prospectors acquired the rights to land near the Kennecott Glacier, which, at that time, contained the richest known concentration of copper on the planet. Over the course of three years, the complex Kennicott Copper Mine complex was constructed in this extremely remote area of Alaska, complete with a 100-mile long railway, five mines, and a 14 story concentration mill that still remains one of the largest wooden buildings on the planet.
McCarthy grew as a supply and entertainment hub for the company town of Kennecott, where gambling and drinking were strictly forbidden. So, McCarthy became a spot for the miners to blow off steam, with brothels, casinos, and saloons lining its streets.
The mine abruptly closed in 1938 when the copper vein ran, and McCarthy was largely abandoned for several decades.
However, things started turning around when the town of Kennecott was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and Wrangell-St. Elias was named a National Park and Reserve in 1980.
Over the years, tourism in the area has continued to grow here. The town has slowly evolved into an eclectic hub to explore the park, with historic buildings that harken back to the days of its frontier town past and a surprising amount of infrastructure to support tourists, like shuttles, hotels, and restaurants. Given its tiny size, there are actually SO many cool things to do in McCarthy, from trying out The Salmon and The Bear, an award-winning restaurant, to flightseeing tours over the park’s 3,100 glaciers.
How to get to McCarthy, Alaska
As mentioned above, getting to McCarthy isn’t exactly the most straightforward. In fact, there are actually no driveable roads that lead directly into or out of the town.
Thankfully, there are a few different options that you can choose from.
Driving
The easiest way to get to McCarthy is simply to drive. Here’s how long it takes to drive from some of the most popular destinations in Alaska to McCarthy:
- Anchorage: 6 hours and 30 minutes
- Denali National Park: 9 hours and 20 minutes
- Seward: 8 hours and 30 minutes
- Homer: 10 hours and 30 minutes
- Valdez: 4 hours and 20 minutes
My husband, Justin, and I drove from Valdez to McCarthy and found that most of the roads leading to McCarthy were paved and reasonably well-maintained.
However, regardless of which direction you come from, you’ll reach the teeny town of Chitina along the way. From Chitina, there’s only one road you can take to or from McCarthy—the aptly named McCarthy Road, a 60-mile stretch of gravel that’s notorious for having gnarly potholes and thousands of old railroad ties, leftover from the mining railway that once laid here. This road ends on the west side of the Kennicott River, about a mile outside of McCarthy.
When my husband, Justin, visited Wrangell-St. Elias, we were SUPER nervous about driving on McCarthy Road, but, to be honest, it probably wouldn’t even rank in the top five worst roads we drove in Alaska. We really didn’t run into too many potholes—I’d just recommend driving slowly and carefully and you’ll be just fine!
That being said, if you’re renting a car in Alaska, there’s a good chance your rental agency won’t allow you to drive on unpaved roads, like this one. So you may need to figure out another way to get there, other than just driving the whole time.
Luckily, you have more options to choose from!
Taking a shuttle
If you don’t have a car in Alaska or are using a rental car that you can’t take on gravel roads, the next most affordable option is to take a shuttle there.
For example, you can take a direct shuttle, operated by Overflow Transit, from Anchorage to McCarthy, which runs on Mondays and Fridays from May through September. As of February 2026, this shuttle costs $450 roundtrip.
Alternatively, if you have a rental car, you can also drive yourself to either Glennallen or Chitina (shortly before the start of McCarthy Road), park your car, and hop on the Kennicott Shuttle from there.
- From Glennallen, the shuttle costs $139 roundtrip if you’re just doing a daytrip or $169 if you’re staying at least one night.
- From Chitina, the shuttle costs $119 roundtrip if you’re just doing a day trip or $149 if you’re staying at least one night.
Finally, there are a few options where you can mix and match shuttle operators for a more affordable price, if you just consider the transportation costs alone. However, since the shuttle schedules don’t perfectly align, you’ll likely actually spend more in total getting to McCarthy, as you’ll have to stay overnight at your transfer location.
For example, to get from Anchorage to McCarthy, you can catch a bus to Glennallen on the Interior Alaska Bus Line, which departs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and reaches Glennallen at 6:15 PM (costing $145 roundtrip). From there, you’d need to stay overnight and then hop on the Kennicott Shuttle, mentioned above, the rest of the way to McCarthy, which departs Glennallen at 7 AM.
Accordingly, unless you’ve got a burning desire to see Glennallen, Alaska, I would suggest either taking a shuttle directly from Anchorage to McCarthy or driving to Glennallen or Chitina and catching the shuttle the rest of the way there.
Getting from the McCarthy Footbridge to McCarthy
As mentioned above, McCarthy Road ends about a mile before the actual town, on the western side of the Kennicott River. So, if you drive or take a shuttle, you’ll need to take another mode of transit that rest of the way there.
If you drive, there are several paid parking lots near the end of McCarthy Road, which conveniently have their pricing painted right on their signs. We paid $5 to park all day at Base Camp Kennicott.
From here, you’ll make the short walk across the McCarthy Footbridge, over the Kennicott River rushing below.
You can either walk for about a mile the rest of the way into town along the flat and well-marked pathway or you can catch one of the shuttles that provide regular service from the footbridge and around the McCarthy-Kennecott area. There are two shuttle operators in town:
- The Copper Town Shuttle costs $15 for unlimited rides around the McCarthy area and runs from the eastern side of the McCarthy Footbridge about every half an hour. Once you get to town, you can pay for a daily pass at the McCarthy Center Store.
- The Blackburn Heritage Shuttle costs $5 per ride (cash only!) and runs approximately every hour.
It’s worth noting that we took the Blackburn Heritage Shuttle the first day we were in McCarthy. In our experience, the guy that operates it (who referred to himself as $5 Dan) mostly does it as a retirement gig to raise money for local charities and, accordingly, doesn’t always have the most reliable schedule.
These are also the same shuttle services that you’ll take to get between McCarthy and Kennecott to experience all of the awesome things to do in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, like taking a historical tour of the old mining town or hiking the Root Glacier Trail.
Flying
If you’re short on time or have a big budget to play around with, flying to McCarthy is also an option.
If you want to fly from Anchorage to McCarthy, Copper Valley Air Services offers flights on Monday and Thursday (year-round), as well as Wednesday and Saturday (only offered June through August).
You’d have to book a flight from Anchorage to Glennallen and then Glennallen on to McCarthy, which would cost a total of $455 one-way.
Alternatively, if you’re flying with a larger group or are splashing out for traveling around Alaska, there are a few operators, including Copper Valley Air Services and Wrangell Mountain Air, through which you can book charter flights. Pricing usually starts at around $2200 for up to three people one way.
Finally, you can drive or take a shuttle most of the way to Chitina and then fly from there. Wrangell Mountain Air also offers daily roundtrip service from Chitina to McCarthy for $430 roundtrip.
As an added bonus, flying to McCarthy is kind of like taking a mini-flightseeing tour, soaring over mountains, rivers braids, glaciers, and, if you’re lucky, even wildlife! We took a seaplane to get to Katmai National Park in Alaska and it was SUCH a treat to get to see Alaska’s epic landscape from ten thousand feet in the air!
I hope you have a better idea of how to get to McCarthy, Alaska—I know it’s a bit confusing! Do you have any questions of getting to this unique and beautiful corner of the planet? Let us know in the comments below!
