File:First Trip of Miles Glacier Ferry (at center right), with Copper River and Northwestern Railway ferry landings visible at (AL+CA 1047).jpg

Caption on image: First Trip of Miles Glacier Ferry July 9. '09 C.R. & N.W. Ry

Handwritten on verso of image is a letter from Livingston Wernecke, a geologist and UW graduate who appears to have been working on the construction of the C.R. & N.W. Railway, to UW Professor Milnor Roberts: Dear Prof. Roberts, This card is one of my own manufacture of an object of my own invention, both drawings and construction ... has been my chief worry for the 4 1/2 mos. when the lake was not frozen over. Because of floating ice bergs, the cost of maintenance was 1/3 of the original cost. Best wishes for a merry Christmas and a Happy year of 1910. [signed] Livingston Wernecke.

The Copper River and Northwestern, or C.R. and N.W., Railway was built between 1909 and 1912 to serve the Kennicott copper mining area. Despite early claims that C.R. & N.W. stood for "Can't Run and Never Will," the railroad operated successfully until it was abandoned when large scale mining ended in 1938. [Source: http://www.nps.gov/wrst/mccarthyroadgeology.htm ] Livingston Wernecke...was an assistant in Mining during his undergraduate years[at the University of Washington]. Wernecke later became famous in Juneau gold mining, and found jobs for over 15 of Washington's graduates in Mining Engineering at the Treadwell complex of gold mines; later Wernecke was a consulting geologist for the famous Alaska Juneau mine. [Source: depts.washington.edu/mse/about/ docs/Centennial_A%20History%20of%20MSE.pdf

• Subjects (LCTGM): Piers & wharves--Alaska; Mountains--Alaska; Railroad ferries--Alaska