Site Logo
The Lancashire family shares a meal in their original homestead cabin. (1954 photo by Bob and Ira Spring for Better Homes & Garden magazine)

Life

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 4

The Lancashires had settled in

1954 photo by Bob and Ira Spring for Better Homes & Garden magazine Rusty Lancashire backs up the family tractor so her husband Larry can connect it to the disc for their fields.

Life

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 3

Rusty and the three Lancashire daughters arrived in Kenai on June 19

[ 2a—] Larry and Rusty Lancashire (at left) pose in front of a B-24 bomber in the early 1940s with another unidentified couple. Larry was a B-24 co-pilot during World War II. (Photo courtesy of the Lancashire Family Collection)

Life

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 2

Larry Lancashire’s status as a military veteran would aid him in his homesteading efforts on the Kenai Peninsula

[1a—] After doing business in the Kenai Commercial Company store, Rusty Lancashire climbs into family station wagon, with its sagging back bumper, to head for home. (1954 photo by Bob and Ira Spring for Better Homes & Garden magazine)

Life

The Lancashires: Evolving lives on the evolving Kenai — Part 1

Mrs. Lancashire certainly didn’t fit Lee’s notion of what a homesteading woman should look like.

This plaque was created in the 1980s to memorialize persons known to have been buried in Homer Community Cemetery. The plaque was considered necessary because so many of the graves here had lost their markers or had never been marked. (Clark Fair photo)

Life

Homer Community Cemetery: Difficulties in filling a public need (Part 2)

For about a half-dozen years, the Homer Community Cemetery served its purpose without a hitch

Clark Fair photo Homer Community Cemetery was first established in 1928 and has been closed to non-reserved burials since the early 1980s.

Life

Homer Community Cemetery: Difficulties in filling a public need (Part 1)

Dying was the problem

Mable Smith pecks away at her typewriter in the Cheechako News office in Ridgeway, circa mid-1960s. (Cheechako News photo)

Life

Don’t stop the presses

The Mable Smith Story — Part 2

Cheechako News photo Mable Smith came into her own as a reporter for the Cheechako News (central Kenai Peninsula) in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Life

Don’t stop the presses

The Mable Smith Story — Part 1

Charles “Windy” Wagner, in his later years, and an unknown woman smile for the camera in Wagner’s Kenai River cabin. (Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection)

Life

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 3)

The conclusion of a three-part story about the life of the man most people knew as “Windy”

Charles “Windy” Wagner was an adept gardener who liked sharing his produce and telling stories about its quality. (Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection)

Life

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 2)

By most accounts, Charles “Windy” Wagner was an energetic, boisterous storyteller who entertained his listeners

Windy Wagner enjoyed entertaining company at his home along the Kenai River. (Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection)

Life

Windy Wagner: Breath of fresh air or just a blowhard? (Part 1)

Most folks seemed to enjoy Charles A. Wagner. They appreciated his hospitality and generosity, his stories and good…

John Fenger, seen here in his later years, died in 2006.

Life

Medical establishment comes to Homer — Part 3

In early spring 1965, there were loose ends to tie up …

The Fenger children — (left to right) Heidi, Eric and Peter — delight in a bounty of silver salmon gathered by setnet below their home in August 1962. (Photo courtesy of the Fenger Family Collection)

Life

Medical establishment comes to Homer — Part 2

It was normal for Dr. John Fenger to receive phone calls when someone in Homer needed medical attention.

Posing stiffly in the bow of the M.S. Hygiene, along the Alaska coast, is Nurse Grace Heutink, clad in a warm fur parka. (Photo courtesy of the Fenger Family Collection)

Life

Medical establishment comes to Homer — Part 1

In the early days of formal medicine in Homer, doctors and dentists were often forced to improvise.

This photo of John Floyd King was taken during his U.S. Army service during World War I. Written beneath the photo was “Some soldier, eh!” (Photo courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection)

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 3

Alec Hardin MacDonald appeared in the census count as a resident of Takotna Village in Interior Alaska

John Floyd King served in the elite Rainbow Division during World War I. By the end of his tenure, he was a machine gunner fighting in France. (Photo courtesy of the Brennan Family Collection)

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 2

John Floyd King disappeared from the record and Doc MacDonald came into being

When Takotna resident Alec MacDonald registered in February 1942 for the military draft, he falsely claimed to have been born in 1900 in Chautauqua County, Kansas.

Life

The Separate Lives of the Man Who Fell — Part 1

Even now, with much more of the truth laid bare, mysteries remain

“A Thousand Cabbages and other poems” by Mary Mullen. Published by Hardscratch Press, 2023. (Promotional photo)

Life

Taking a wider view

‘A Thousand Cabbages and other poems’ sweeps across time and distance in Mullen’s second outing

Photo #1.628 courtesy of the Seward Community Library Association Dr. John Baughman’s wife, Mina (left), poses in this circa 1905-10 photo with Mrs. E.E. Hale on a Seward city sidewalk near the Alaska Central Railroad and Seward’s first school.

Life

Dr. Baughman’s Unusual Second Job, Part 2

Dr. John A. Baughman also filed a lot of paperwork.

(Photo from a lantern slide courtesy of Gary Titus This 1904 Baughman Collection photo shows two hunters—Dr. John Baughman (left, holding girl) and W.H. Case—with four mountain goats they killed near the summit of White Pass and brought back to their home in Skagway later by train.

Life

Dr. Baughman’s Unusual Second Job, Part One

In the late 1990s, Michael Hankins and two of his pals were treasure hunting near Old Knik when…