The McCarthy Road corridor sits in dense boreal forest at the end of a 60-mile gravel road, where mountainous terrain and heavy fuels can carry fire quickly. A 1990s spruce beetle outbreak left standing dead spruce that adds to the fuel load across the region. Kennicott/McCarthy adopted its first Community Wildfire Protection Plan in 2011 and is a certified Firewise Community; a neighboring plan covers the Chitina area of the corridor.
The most destructive fire season on record here. The Sourdough Hill Fire, presumably sparked by railroad activity, burned roughly 384,000 acres from Chitina to the Kennicott River and north to the Wrangell Mountains. That same year, a separate fire burned about 64,000 acres from Kennicott to the Nazina River.
The 1927 Willow Creek Fire, a human-caused fire started by construction crews, burned about 128,000 acres between the Copper and Tonsina Rivers. The 1969 Edgerton Fire, also human-caused, burned roughly 3,700 acres west of the Chitina planning area.
Burned roughly 14,069 acres west of the Kennicott/McCarthy area.
Lightning has driven most recent fire activity in the corridor: the 2009 Chakina Fire (~56,400 acres, McCarthy area), the 2011 Gilahina Fire (~1,065 acres, Chokosna area), the 2016 Steamboat Creek Fire (reburning part of the Chakina scar — reported at ~18,300 acres, and the 2019 Chetaslina Fire (~2,100 acres, north of Chitina).
Beyond these large fires, numerous smaller, human-caused fires are recorded within the Kennicott/McCarthy planning area in the Alaska Fire History Location database. Individually small, these wildland-urban interface fires could have led to a catastrophic outcome if left uncontained.
This summary draws primarily on our own community's 2026 McCarthy/Kennicott Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which documents local fire history and risk in detail.
The neighboring Chitina Community Wildfire Protection Plan covers the western part of the McCarthy Road corridor and documents additional fire history for the area, including the Willow Creek, Edgerton, and Chetaslina fires.
Explore Alaska's statewide historical fire perimeter data from the Division of Forestry and Alaska Fire Service, including past fires in this region.
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