Independence Mine State Historical Park

The Independence Mine State Historical Park is located about an hour and a half from Anchorage or about 30 minutes from Palmer and Wasilla. The Independence Mine is a very large mine with dozens of miles of tunnels underneath the granite rock. This gold mine began production prior to 1938 but seemed to pick up steam when a company bought the Independence Mine and the nearby Alaska Free Gold Mine, called the Martin Mine, and consolidated resources and production. Production amounted to more than $6,000,000 in gold but the mine closed down in 1951. Many of the buildings are well preserved making for some very enjoyable exploration. The Independence Mine is on the National Register of Historic Places and covers about 270 acres of land. You can still peek inside some of the buildings and go in some when they are opened. There are plenty of information signs along the way too. The loop trail circles around most of the relics including the trestle bridge. The self guided tour starts off just below the mine complex and buildings. The preservation of this area is absolutely astounding considering there are still thousands of artifacts, a few dozen buildings and large tailings still littering the area and they are still in the same place they were left more than 50+ years ago. There is a small parking lot with pit style restrooms and a gate. You could park here and hike up to the mine or you could pay the $5 parking cost (per vehicle) and drive up the little ways to the main parking lot. At the main parking lot there is plenty of room for vehicles, RVs and buses. It is here you will find the visitor center, a few picnic tables and more pit style outhouses. Most of the adits are sealed or gated shut. If you glanced around the surrounding area you can probably see evidence of other mine openings. There are several trails in and around Independence Mine State Historical Park. The Mill Loop trail makes a circle around all the cool buildings, visits the Water Tunnel and then meets back up near the parking lot. With that in mind we explored the large three-story bunk houses and then headed up to the Fishhook Creek waterfall from there. We were all very surprised by all the tools, bottles and other artifacts still visible through the broken windows of one of these buildings. It added a thick layer of adventure to this area that made us want to come back again and see what else we could find. Another reason why this park was so much fun to explore was the incredible scenery. The whole area is treeless but there is endless green tundra landscape, tall pointed and jagged mountains and several small lakes. I stopped many times to take pictures of the surrounding mountains but I simply could not capture how beautiful it really was - all the more reason for you to come visit! We quickly discovered a waterfall which brought the Fishhook Creek close by the now destroyed mill, near the main complex of buildings and then it exited outside of town. You can see that the park service has been repainting and repairing some of the buildings. Some of them looked really good! From here the trail dead-ends. We went back and took a right up an inclined dirt path up to the top of the mill site. The mill has since been demolished or toppled over by snow and weather but you can see by the thousands of pieces of wood that the mill was huge. Once near the top we could see that there was once a rail system which would bring many ore carts and dump it right into the mill. Look up the mountain a little ways and you will see the actual Independence Mine. We eventually made our way to where the Water Tunnel is located. The Water Tunnel was the only entrance in the immediate area that we were allowed to check out. It is an adit which intersects upper workings of the Independence Mine and coincidentally brings out a good amount of ice cold water. There is a kiosk which explained that the year-round temperature for this mine was below 40 degrees Fahrenheit! Imagine mining underground in 40 degree temperatures and then coming outside to negative 40 degrees! After the Water Tunnel we came upon a line of ore carts. We then circled around and came back to our car. There was another interesting information kiosk about the conditions of the mine and camp. The Mill Loop trail meets back up at the parking lot. I really enjoyed Independence Mine State Historical Park! This is probably one of my favorite state parks I have visited - besides Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. It is very small in size but the area was so incredibly beautiful and the mining history was so fascinating and the old buildings were really cool to explore and that is why I am rating this one so high. I will definitely come back and explore more of the trails and see if I can't venture higher up in elevation to check out the other mines. Come see this state park!