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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)

Community

Medical establishment comes to Homer — Part 1

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

After William Dempsey escaped from the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island, Wash., in 1940, this informational reward poster was issued by the prison warden.

Community

A nexus of lives and lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 1

William Dempsey and two other men slipped away from the rest of the prison road gang on fog-enshrouded…

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

Community

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)

Community

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 1

Toeing the Line

Photo courtesy of Newspapers.com archive Sisters Alice M. Brooks and Willietta E. Kuppler (both nee Dolan), seen here (center of photo) in a 1943 Los Angeles newspaper article, taught in Kenai from 1911 to 1914 and came to despise Bill Dawson, whom they referred to as “Old Bible Bill.”

Community

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 3

“… If I were to designate the meanest character I ever met, I should name ‘Old Bible Bill,’…

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

Community

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 2

William N. “Bill” Dawson was a spinner of yarns who came to the Kenai Peninsula in the 1890s

Only months before his death in 1941, Miriam Mathers’ son Charles registered for the military draft.

Community

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)

Community

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 2

Mathers was dead.

Photo by Clark Fair Abby (Lancashire) Ala, seen here giving riding lessons in the early 2000s, was just a child when her mother befriended Miriam Mathers. Ala now lives on a portion of the old Mathers homestead.

Community

Tragedy and triumph of the Goat Woman — Part 4

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

Although she applied for a patent to her homestead in 1948, the patent was not granted until 1953, three and a half years after her death.

Community

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