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Clark Fair

This photo of Victor Kelly, of Ninilchik—who assisted in the 1927 rescue of Ninilchik schoolteacher John Bess Howe—appeared with his obituary in the Homer News in October 2000.

Life

Winter rescue: Saving the teacher’s life — Part 5

John Bess Fancher (nee Howe) had nearly died in Ninilchik in November 1927 after accidentally shooting herself in…

A version of the John Bess Howe rescue tale appeared in this July 1928 issue of True Story Magazine. Unfortunately, according to Howe, many parts of the True Story story were untrue.

Life

Winter rescue: Saving the teacher’s life — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Nov. 20, 1927, Ninilchik schoolteacher John Bess Howe accidentally shot herself in the abdomen while…

John Bess Howe was transferred to Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle in late 1927. This photograph of her and her concerned mother appeared in the Seattle Daily Times on New Year’s Day 1928.

Life

Winter rescue: Saving the teacher’s life — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Nov. 20, 1927, Ninilchik schoolteacher John Bess Howe accidentally shot herself in the abdomen while…

Photo from the Kenai United Methodist Church archives The Kenai Methodist Church in 1962.

Life

Our Sunday best: Early churches of the central Kenai Peninsula — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story first appeared in May 2013 in the Redoubt Reporter. The…

Photo from the Kenai Peninsula College photo archive Soldotna’s Catholic Church (Our Lady of Perpetual Help), circa 1962.

Life

Our Sunday best: Early churches of the central Kenai Peninsula — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story first appeared in May 2013 in the Redoubt Reporter. The…

Photo courtesy of the Kenai Historical Society Today’s Russian Orthodox Church, in Kenai, as seen circa 1900, only a few years after its construction.

Life

Our Sunday best: Early churches of the central Kenai Peninsula — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story first appeared in May 2013 in the Redoubt Reporter. The…

By the early 1910s, crossing the Killey River was part of a regular route into moose- and Dall sheep-hunting country, via Skilak Lake. This photo, featuring a hunting guide crossing the river in a collapsible boat, was taken in 1912 and included in Morris L. Parrish’s 1913 hunting memoir.

Life

The Killey mystery — Part 2

The name “Killey River”—spelled exactly as it is today—first appeared in print, as far as I can tell,…

This section from a 1904 U.S. Geological Survey map is likely the earliest to use the modern spelling of the Killey River.

Life

The Killey mystery — Part 1

Think of this article as a crowdsourcing exercise.

Ralph Soberg, who spent decades working for the Alaska Road Commission, published Bridging Alaska in 1991. In his book, he describes many of the accomplishments of Hawley Winchell Sterling.

Life

Life-changing moments in the Hawley Sterling story — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Oct. 4, 1918, a young mother named Margaret Sterling left her Nenana home to ride…

Joseph Sterling, the only child of highway-building pioneer Hawley Sterling, visited Alaska with his wife, Pat, in the summer of 2000 and was interviewed by Homer News reporter Carey Restino, who took this image in Homer.

Life

Life-changing moments in the Hawley Sterling story — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Oct. 4, 1918, a young mother named Margaret Sterling left her Nenana home to ride…

Joseph Sterling, a Denver lawyer, was the father of Hawley Sterling and the namesake of Hawley’s only son. (Public photo from ancestry.com)

News

Life-changing moments in the Hawley Sterling story — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Oct. 4, 1918, a young mother named Margaret Sterling left her Nenana home to ride…

Hawley Winchell Sterling, in his Class of 1912 senior portrait at the University of Denver. He was about 23 years at this time and had already spent a summer or two in Alaska, honing his skills in surveying and engineering.

Life

Life-changing moments in the Hawley Sterling story — Part 1

Single moments alter lives. A man leaves for work five minutes late and fails to avoid a serious…

Photo from the Mona Painter Collection James “Little Jim” Dunmire and James “Big Jim” O’Brien are the namesakes of Jim’s Landing on the middle Kenai River.

Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the sixth in a multi-part series about Kenai Peninsula places and landmarks that once…

The middle portion of this section of the 1910 map created by Dr. David H. Sleem shows Lost Lake and Lost Creek. Today, these features are known as Crescent Lake and Crescent Creek. The lake in this map also curves in the wrong direction.

Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the fifth in a multi-part series about Kenai Peninsula places and landmarks that once…

Photo courtesy of Joseph Sterling in Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, by Lael Morgan As a young man, Hawley Sterling turned his back on politics and Ivy League colleges to become an engineer and spend most of his adult life building roads in Alaska. The Sterling Highway and the community of Seward are named in honor of Hawley Sterling, who died of stomach cancer before the highway was dedicated.

Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in a multi-part series about Kenai Peninsula places and landmarks that once…

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Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a multi-part series about Kenai Peninsula places and landmarks that once…

Photos from the Mona Painter Collection This is one of only two photos known to depict Joseph M. Cooper, namesake of Cooper Landing, Cooper Lake, Cooper Creek and Cooper Mountain. Cooper himself is standing second-from-left in the back row. The photo was probably taken in Ninilchik around 1899.

Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Place names can be ephemeral and can fade for myriad reasons. Sometimes offensive names are replaced…

Back in his younger days (the late 1940s), Willard Dunham drove a tour bus full of steamship passengers out of Seward to the Cooper Landing area, including a stop at what was then called Mud Lake. (Photo from his online 2019 obituary)

Life

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a series of articles concerning places and landmarks on the Kenai…

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Ben Swesey: More to the story — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Seasoned Seward outdoorsmen Ben Swesey and William Weaver left home on Oct. 15, 1917 in Swesey’s…

John P. Holman poses with his first Dall sheep ram, shot in 1917 while being guided by Ben Swesey in the Kenai Mountains. (Photo from Holman’s 1933 hunting memoir)

Life

Ben Swesey: More to the story — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Seven years after his friend William Weaver nearly drowned in Kenai Lake while returning from guiding…