The Independence Mines, now Independence Mine State Historic Park, is the site of a former gold mining operation in the Talkeetna Mountains, across Hatcher Pass from Palmer, Alaska. The area's mining history dates to at least 1897, when active claims were reported in the vicinity of Fishook Creek. These early mining efforts were eventually joined to form the Wasilla Mining Company, which worked the mines from 1934 to 1943, and again from 1948 to 1950. The mining operation at Independence was the second-largest hard-rock gold mining operation in the state, after a larger site near Juneau. The company and the miners that preceded it built a substantial mining camp, with as many as sixteen wood-frame buildings, which were originally connected to each other by sheltered wooden "tunnels". When the company ended operations in 1950, it had expected to eventually resume operations, but never did; this resulted in a particularly well-preserved collection of mining equipment and buildings, although the weather has since taken a significant toll on the latter.

The Talkeetna Mountains are a mountain range in Alaska. The Matanuska and Susitna River valleys, with towns such as Trapper Creek, Talkeetna, Wasilla, Palmer, Sutton, and Chickaloon, roughly bound the Talkeetnas in the westerly parts of the range. Sovereign Mountain rises to 8,849 feet (2,697 m) in the remote and heavily glaciated central part of the range. The east side of the range fronts a broad, about 100 miles (160 km) wide, lake-studded lowland of forests and swamps, across which rises the gigantic Mount Wrangell volcanic edifice. Alaska Highway 4 runs northward through this lowland. Hundreds of miles to the west Alaska Highway 3 runs along the western side of the Talkeetna range, with the Alaska Range directly west. Alaska Highway 1, running along the southern front of the Talkeetna Mountains, lies mainly in a valley marking a tectonic divide between the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks of the accretionary wedge, island-arc, and basement rocks in the Peninsular terrane, and the Chugach Mountains in the Chugach terrane to the south. The range stretches as much as a hundred miles north to south. Alaska Highway 8, seasonal and unpaved, passes over highlands rising to above 4,000 feet (1,200 m), north of the Talkeetnas.