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This is how Kenai appeared in about 1919, when Bill Dawson was running a general store in the village. (Photo courtesy of the Kenai Historical Society)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Part One introduced William N. “Bill” Dawson as a spinner of yarns who came to the…

William N. (“Bill”) Dawson poses in either Kenai or Kasilof in 1898 with a collection of moose antlers and sheep horns — trophies from kills he had made in the Skilak Lake area. (Photo from J.T. Studley’s 1912 hunting memoir)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 1

Toeing the Line

P.F. “Frenchy” Vian poses with a cigar and some reading material, probably circa 1920, in an unspecified location. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 6

The many vital chapters in the story of Frenchy fell into place

Eventually, all but one of Frenchy’s siblings would live for a time in the United States. Carlo Viani, pictured here in the early 1900s, also spent some time in Alaska. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 5

By many accounts, P.F. “Frenchy” Vian appears to have been at least an adequate game warden for Kenai

Frenchy posed with this heap of hunting and trapping trophies in Kenai in 1899. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 4

Frenchy was not satisfied and not even close to being finished with big achievements

Frenchy wrote many letters and postcards to family members. This 1906 postcard was addressed to his sister Bianca in Villa Viani, Italy. (Image courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the Story of Frenchy, Part 3

On Aug. 4, 1892, the Associated Press reported that the revenue cutter Bear had, on June 4, rescued…

Frenchy Vian, who posed for many photographs of himself, was acknowledged as a skilled hunter. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 2

In fact, Frenchy’s last name wasn’t even Vian; it was Viani, and he and the rest of his…

This photo of Frenchy with a freshly killed black bear was taken on the Kenai Peninsula in the early 1900s. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 1

The stories were full of high adventure — whaling, mining, polar bear hunting, extensive travel, and the accumulation…

Marcia and Mary Alice Grainge pose in 1980 with a pair of caribou antlers they found in 1972. The sisters dug the antlers from deep snow and detached them from a dead caribou. (Photo provided by Marcia Grainge King)

Life

Fortune and misfortune on the Kenai — Part 2

In Kasilof, and on Kachemak Bay, in Seldovia and later in Unga, Petersen worked various jobs before being…

Photo provided by the KPC archive of historical photographs Ed Back, left, and Bill Gross chat with Ridgeway homeowner Betty Karsten as they install a natural gas hookup to her home in 1961. Betty and Emmett Karsten became Alaska’s first civilian consumers of natural gas.

Life

Fortune and misfortune on the Kenai — Part 1

Sometimes timing is everything

A headstone for J.E. Hill is photographhed in Anchorage, Alaska. (Findagrave.com)

Life

Night falls on the Daylight Kid — Part 2

“Bob,” he said, “that crazy fool is shooting at us.”

Page from Seward daily gateway. (Alaska State Library, Archives and Museum, Juneau, A.K.)

Life

Night falls on the Daylight Kid — Part 1

Night Falls on the Daylight Kid—Part One By Clark Fair

On Oct. 3, 1945, the Spokane Chronicle published this A.P. photo of Miriam Mathers and her goats as she prepared to board a Seattle steamship bound for Seward.

Life

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 4

Mathers had only three cents in her purse when she arrived in Kenai

The Associated Press caught up to Miriam Mathers in 1943 and took this photo when she was trying to move overland to Alaska with her goats and other animals.

Life

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 3

Her quest for Alaska had begun, but another date with tragedy lay just around the corner

In about 1904, the full family of Arthur and Ellen Davidson (front row) posed for this family portrait. Miriam Davidson, the third born, is in the dark blouse on the right end of the back row; she is standing next to her older siblings, Cora and William. (Photo courtesy of the David Family Collection)

Life

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 2

Mathers was dead.

Better Homes & Gardens article photo, 1955 Rusty Lancashire, who befriended her neighbor, Miriam Mathers, climbs into her vehicle in front of the Kenai Commercial Company store in Kenai.

Life

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 1

Florence Lorraine “Rusty” Lancashire first met her neighbor, the old Goat Woman, in the fall of 1948

Chester LeRoy Oughton was in his mid-60s and still serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in Alaska when these photos were taken at McNeil Island federal penitentiary in Washington in 1972. (Image courtesy of the National Archives in San Francisco)

Life

The Seward jailbreak of 1952 — Part 2

Prisoners Frank Charles Oliver and Chester LeRoy Oughton had been foiled in their attempt to reach the central…

Chester LeRoy Oughton’s entry photos at the Alcatraz Island federal penitentiary in 1953. Oughton was convicted of first-degree murder in Alaska. (Image courtesy of the National Archives in San Francisco)

Life

The Seward Jailbreak of 1952 — Part 1

The fugitives were Franklin Charles Oliver and Chester LeRoy Oughton.

Photos from Seward Community Library Association collection in Alaska Digital Archives S.S. Yukon is perched half left on the rocks after the steamship broke in half, the stern sank out of sight. This forward section remained wedged on the rocks off Cape Fairfield, near the entrance of Prince William Sound.

Life

The heroic rise and tragic fall of ‘The Screaming Swede’ — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the second part of a two-part story about Jimmy Johnson, a commercial fisherman who…

This is the memorial plaque that since 2001 has adorned the grave of James William Johnson, also known as “The Screaming Swede.” Photo courtesy of Peggy Arness.

Life

The heroic rise and tragic fall of ‘The Screaming Swede’ — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Peggy Arness for access to her history files and the Resurrection…