The Kantishna Roadhouse, located in what was once the downtown area of the gold mining town of Kantishna near the end of the Park Road, is the oldest standing building in Denali National Park and Preserve. The Kantishna Roadhouse represents the social history of Kantishna’s 1920s revival as a mining community and is one of the few intact buildings remaining from the historic mining era (1903-1942). In August 2018, the Roadhouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
While the Kantishna region experienced a mining stampede in 1905-06, the region’s riches were not exhausted. Miners in larger numbers started returning to the Kantishna area in 1919 as a part of a substantial investment by Thomas Aitken in lode mining along Mineral Ridge (now known as Quigley Ridge). The lode claims were just north of the Roadhouse’s “downtown" Kantishna location, which was the hub of the Kantishna mining community. Many laborers came to Kantishna during this time to build the Kantishna dam and ditch as a part of a large hydraulic mining operation administered by James “Doc" Sutherland and the Kantishna Hydraulic Mining Company (KHMC).
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service