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Capt. Karl Kircheiß, a decorated German sailor, visited Steve Melchior in Seward in 1932.

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Steve Melchior: Treasured peninsula pioneer with a sketchy past — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: An adulthood constructed on a web of lies eventually led Stephan “Steve” Melchior to leave his…

This is the most famous photograph of Steve Melchior, as a copy of it resides in the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. The Melchior family owns a very similar photograph, with a note in pencil from Steve Melchior on the back. The note, written for family members back in Germany in the late 1920s when Melchior was suffering from rheumatism, says, “That is the only way I can get out because my legs won’t walk anymore. I don’t like driving a car, and the dogs take me wherever I want to go. The one in the front is called Bill (in German, Wilhelm), and the one on the left is called Waldman. The black one on the right is called Nick or Nikolaus. Three good, loyal workers, my bodyguard.”

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Steve Melchior: Treasured peninsula pioneer with a sketchy past — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: By at least his early 20s, Steve Melchior had begun to fabricate a past that would…

Between 1879 and 1892, Stephan Melchior (far left, middle row) performed his mandatory Prussian military service. He was a member of the Eighth Rhineland Infantry Regiment No. 70 in Trier, Germany. (Photo courtesy of the Melchior Family Collection)

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Steve Melchior: Treasured peninsula pioneer with a sketchy past — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although I could not have written this series without the assistance of numerous individuals, I want…

Frank Rowley and his youngest child, Raymond, stand in knee-deep snow in front of the protective fence around the main substation for Mountain View Light & Power in Anchorage in 1948 or ’49. This photo was taken a year or two before Rowley moved to Kenai to begin supplying electrical power to the central peninsula. (Photo courtesy of the Rowley Family)

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Let there be light: The electrifying Frank Rowley — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A similar version of this two-part story concerning the life of Frank Rowley and the ways…

This is the Kenai Power complex. The long side of the plant faces the Frank Rowley home, seen here at the right side of the photograph. (Photo courtesy of the Rowley Family)

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Let there be light: The electrifying Frank Rowley — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A similar version of this two-part story concerning the life of Frank Rowley and the ways…

Mary L. Penney and her son Ronald, circa 1930, probably in New York prior to her move to Florida, where she lived out the final years of her life. (Photo courtesy of the Penney Family Collection)

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 10

Locals were intrigued by tales of East Coast miners pushing homemade wheelbarrows and pulling heavily laden sledges across…

Herman Stelter, seen here in front of his home in the Kenai River canyon, was another of the Kings County Mining Company members to stay in Alaska. (U.S. Forest Service photo, circa 1910s)

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska Adventure — Part 9

AUTHOR’S NOTE: After deciding, in the summer of 1899, to truncate her participation in the gold-seeking expedition of…

At some point after William B. Hurd was buried in Kenai in 1899, his family asked that his body be exhumed and sent back to New York, where it was reburied. This image, from findagrave.com, shows the marker on his final resting place.

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 8

Mary L. Penney, like most of the other members of the Kings County Mining Company, was coming home…

This excerpt from a 1916 U.S. Department of Agriculture map shows Kachemak Bay and vicinity less than 20 years after the arrival of the Kings County Mining Company.

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 7

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On Oct. 16, 1898, Brooklynite Mary L. Penney and the rest of the Kings County Mining…

U.S. Army Captain Edwin F. Glenn led an 1898 military exploration of Cook Inlet. Glenn and his crew, who were departing the inlet at about the same time that the Kings County Mining Company was arriving, left behind a journal of the expedition. That journal, archived in the Alaska Digital Archives, included daily notations about the weather.

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 6

On Oct. 9, it was clear all day, and the expedition steamed easily across the inlet to Homer.

San Francisco Bay and Vicinity map, circa 1900, from the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s online page.

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska Adventure — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Brooklynite Mary L. Penney and the rest of the Kings County Mining Company had departed New…

This Library of Congress photo shows the U.S.S. Maine, which exploded and sank in the harbor at Havanna, Cuba, about the same time the Kings County Mining Company’s ship, the Agate left Brooklyn for Alaska. The Maine incident prompted the start of the Spanish-American War and complicated the mining company’s attempt to sail around Cape Horn.

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Mary Penney and Her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Mary L. Penney and a group of other gold-seeking stockholders in the Kings County Mining Company…

The bark (or barque) called the Agate, which carried members of the Kings County Mining Company from Brooklyn, New York, to Cook Inlet, was probably similar to this three-masted barque featured on Wikipedia.

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Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before Mary Lovett Penney boarded the Kings County Mining Company’s three-masted sailing ship, the bark Agate,…