Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Photo: James Brooks · CC BY 2.0Most of McCarthy was built recently: 0.0% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1990. Below: 6 old photos and papers, maps from 1959 on, and the census since 1920.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Lost two-thirds of its people between 1920 and 1990, then grew 4-fold.
7 censuses, 1920–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on McCarthy’s Wikipedia page.
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving. One is a National Historic Landmark, the highest tier.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
From Wikipedia’s history of McCarthy.
For centuries, Athabascans hunted in the area of McCarthy. Chief Nikolai and his band of Athabaskan Natives had a summer camp at Dan Creek, 15 miles east of McCarthy, where they collected copper nuggets from Dan Creek. Their permanent camp was on the Copper River at the village of Taral near Chitina where they fished for salmon.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveChitina-Fairbanks Road in snow, near McCarthy, Alaska, 1898
In the archiveRock Glacier surface
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey2 decades in the archive, from the 1890s to the 1910s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of McCarthy. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of McCarthy.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on McCarthy’s page.
Retake this view · +15Another post office, Kennecott, opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
Three places: the Kennecott Mines (listed 1978), the McCarthy General Store (1978) and the McCarthy Power Plant (1979).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), the National Register of Historic Places (3), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
★ Landmark
1916
1917
1917
1917