Editing Valdez, Alaska (section)

=== Mining town ===
A scam to lure prospectors off the Klondike Gold Rush trail led to a town being developed there in 1898. Some steamship companies promoted the Valdez Glacier Trail as a better route for miners to reach the [[Klondike Gold Rush|Klondike]] gold fields and discover new ones in the Copper River country of interior Alaska than that from [[Skagway, Alaska|Skagway]]. The prospectors who believed the promotion found that they had been deceived. The glacier trail was twice as long and steep as reported, and many men died attempting the crossing, in part by contracting [[scurvy]] during the long cold winter without adequate supplies. The town did not flourish until after the construction of the [[Richardson Highway]] in 1910, which connected Valdez and Fairbanks. With a new road and its [[Port#Warm-water port|ice-free port]], Valdez became permanently established as the first overland supply route into the interior of Alaska. The highway was open in summer-only until 1950, when it started operating as a year-round route.<ref name="ReferenceA">Paragraph edited by the Valdez Museum and Historical Archive Mar 2009</ref>

[[File:McKinley Avenue, Valdez, Alaska, June 24, 1908 (COBB 144).jpeg|thumb|left|McKinley Avenue in Valdez, June 1908]]
In 1907, a shootout between two rival railroad companies ended Valdez's hope of becoming the railroad link from tidewater to the Kennicott Copper Mine. The mine, located in the heart of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, was one of the richest copper ore deposits on the continent. The exact location of the right-of-way dispute, in which one man was killed and several injured, is located at the southern entrance of [[Keystone Canyon]] on the Valdez side. A half-completed tunnel in the canyon marks the end of railroad days in Valdez. A rail line to Kennicott was later established from the coastal city of Cordova.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>