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Clark Fair

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…

This image is the only confirmed photograph of guide Ben Swesey discovered by the author. The photo, from John P. Holman’s 1933 hunting memoir, “Sheep and Bear Trails,” shows Swesey working to remove the cape from a Dall sheep ram shot by Holman in 1917.

Life

Ben Swesey: More to the story — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Danger was inherent in the job. Although his fellow hunting guide, William Weaver, had narrowly escaped…

This excerpt from a U.S. Geological Survey map shows the approximate location of Snug Harbor on lower Kenai Lake. It was in this area that William Weaver nearly drowned in 1910.

Life

Ben Swesey: More to the story — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Michigan’s hard-luck Swesey clan sprang into existence because of the misfortunes of the Basom clan. All…

This screenshot from David Paulides’s “Missing 411” YouTube podcast shows the host beginning his talk about the disappearance of Ben Swesey and William Weaver.

Life

Ben Swesey: More to the story — Part 1

More than a hundred years after Ben Swesey and Bill Weaver steered an outboard-powered dory out of Resurrection…

Photo by Clark Fair This 2025 image of the former grounds of the agricultural experiment station in Kenai contains no buildings left over from the Kenai Station days. The oldest building now, completed in the late 1930s, is the tallest structure in this photograph.

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 8

Over the past 50 years or more, the City of Kenai has attempted on several occasions to capitalize…

Photo courtesy of the Arness Family Collection L. Keith McCullagh, pictured here aboard a ship in about 1915, was a U.S. Forest Service ranger charged with establishing a ranger station in Kenai, a task that led him to the agricultural experiment station there and into conflict with “Frenchy” Vian and his friends.

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 7

AUTHOR’S NOTE: After the agricultural experiment station in Kenai closed May 1, 1908, Alaska station supervisor C.C. Georgeson…

The cover of The Clenched Fist, the memoir by Alice M. Brooks and Willietta E. Kuppler concerning their 1911-14 teaching tenure in Kenai

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE: By 1907, the end of the line had nearly arrived for Kenai’s agricultural experiment station, which…

Prof. C.C. Georgeson, circa 1910s, inspects an apple tree on one of his Alaska agricultural experiment stations. (Image from the Rasmuson Library historical archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks)

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A presidential executive order in January 1899 had set aside 320 acres of land near Russian…

In his 1903 report to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Prof. Charles Christian Georgeson included this photograph of efforts to break recently cleared ground at Kenai’s agricultural experiment station. The man behind the bull was either station superintendent Hans P. Nielsen or his assistant Pontus H. Ross.

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A presidential executive order in January 1899 had set aside 320 acres of land near Russian…

Photo from the Alaska State Library historical collection In Kenai, circa 1903, this trio was photographed on a well-used trail. Pictured are George S. Mearns, future Kenai postmaster; Kate R. Gompertz, Kenai resident; Hans P. Nielsen, superintendent of Kenai’s agricultural experiment station.

Life

The experiment: Kenai becomes an agricultural test site — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Presidential Executive Order #148, in January 1899, had set aside 320 acres of land near Russian…