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Photo from a U.S. Application for Seaman’s Protection Certificate Vera Liebel, pictured here, and Mary Douglas Barnsley, friends and both former nurses in the Kenai area, were two of the only women known to have had a cabin on Tustumena Lake in the early to mid-1900s.

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Cosmopolitan Tustumena — Part 1

Few people these days would associate the word “cosmopolitan” with Tustumena Lake, and for good reason. The lake…

A lone hooligan fisherman heads upstream on the lower Kenai River to try his luck from Cunningham Memorial Park. (Clark Fair photo)

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Sometimes it seems as though the resolution of a criminal investigation, the resulting hearings or trials,…

Pictured in an online public portrait is Anthony J. Dimond, the Anchorage judge who presided over the sentencing hearing of William Franke, who pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Ethen Cunningham in January 1948.

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: During the evening of Jan. 19, 1948, in Kenai, William Franke shot dead Ethen Cunningham near…

This excerpt from a survey dating back more than a century shows a large meander at about Mile 6 of the Kenai River. Along the outside of this river bend in 1948 were the homestead properties of Ethen Cunningham, William Franke and Charles “Windy” Wagner.

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 4

One early December morning in the old cabin, the Frankes were having breakfast when Cunningham stormed over.

Photo courtesy of the Knackstedt Collection Charles “Windy” Wagner, pictured here in about the year in which Ethen Cunningham was murdered, was a neighbor to both the victim and the accused, William Franke.

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: During the evening of Jan. 19, 1948, in Kenai, William Franke shot dead Ethen Cunningham near…

William Henry Franke signed this draft-registration card in August 1942 in Massachusetts. At the time, he was serving with the U.S. Merchant Marine. Four years later, he would move to the Kenai Peninsula. In January 1948, he would kill Ethen Cunningham.

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Ethen Cunningham came to the Kenai Peninsula in about 1940. He homesteaded along the lower Kenai…

Former Kenai resident and businessman Hal Thornton first arrived in Kenai on the evening that Ethen Cunningham was murdered. He described his experience with this event in the Kenai chapter of this memoir.

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States of Mind: The death of Ethen Cunningham — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: At the outset, I want to acknowledge invaluable contributions to this story from these three primary…

On its last legs. When the Peninsula Clarion’s Ashlyn O’Hara captured this image of Good Time Charlies in 2022, the old bar and strip club was about to be demolished to make room for a highway-safety project.

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A violent season — Part 7

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The aftermath of the 1967 shoot-out at the Hilltop Bar and Café, near Soldotna, began to…

This is the front side of the 1942 draft-registration card for Wilford Lorenzo “Bill” Hansen. He came to live on the Kenai Peninsula during the early 1950s and soon purchased a share in the Circus Bar, later changing its name to the Hilltop Bar and Café. (Document from ancestry.com)

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A violent season — Part 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE: After the Ann Pederson suicide and the Jack Griffiths murder in 1961, the former Circus Bar…

These three drink tokens, probably all from the 1960s, came from Hilltop Bar and Café, in Soldotna, and were contributed by Jim Taylor.

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A violent season — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The jury in the Jim Bush murder trial would soon have a decision to make. Bush…

James Franklin Bush was arrested and jailed for vagrancy and contributing to the delinquency of minors in California in 1960, about a year before the murder in Soldotna of Jack Griffiths. (Public document from ancestry.com)

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A violent season — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: When a crime has no witnesses other than the accused perpetrator, investigators must search hard for…

Public photo from ancestry.com Shortly after the death of Jack Griffiths behind the Circus Bar in 1961, young Jim Bush was arrested and charged with murder.

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A violent season — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Only a few months after the 1961 suicide of “Mrs. Oscar W. Pederson” behind a bar…

Calvin Fair, in his element, on Buck Mountain, above Chief Cove on Kodiak Island, in October 1986. His hunting partner and longtime friend Will Troyer captured this image while they were on one of the duo’s annual deer-hunting trips.

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The Road Not Taken: A tribute to my father’s career choice

From the moment my father began working for the U.S. Army in Whittier, Alaska, in the fall of…