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This is Walter Kotoff’s 1941 passport photo. Courtesy of the Lu Liston Collection, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center.

Features

Winter rescue: Saving the teacher’s life — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Many of the “facts” in this century-old story have been buried beneath a stratum of misinformation,…

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

Features

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.

Features

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…

Father Juvenaly, Kenai’s first Russian Orthodox priest, led the establishment of Christianity on the Kenai Peninsula. (Wikipedia image extracted from a larger church icon)

Features

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.

Features

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.

Features

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.

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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.

Features

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…

The “Y” junction in Soldotna was a little less obvious in its early days. Here, Alaska Road Commission engineer Louie Hendricks poses next to a directional sign indicating which way to turn for either Kenai or Moose Pass. (Photo courtesy Al Hershberger)

Features

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.

Features

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…

Photos courtesy of Don Culver An early morning mist forms over the waters of Longmere Lake, from the homestead of Don Culver, first homesteader on the lake, in 1947.

Features

‘What’s in a name?’: Reviving a forgotten past — Part 7

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh and final chapter in a multi-part series about Kenai Peninsula places and…

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.

Features

‘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.

Features

‘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…