20 years ago

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, announced that transportation appropriations approved by the U.S. Senate included $5.8 million for upgrading and expanding the Main Dock, renamed the Pioneer Dock. The bill was set to go to a joint House/Senate conference committee for final approval and signature. The project would expand the ferry dock and build a new berth for a new Coast Guard buoy tender to replace the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sedge.

— From the issue of June 22, 2000

30 years ago

Alaska State Troopers caught a man convicted of sexual abuse of a minor who had escaped from the Homer Jail on June 7, the day he was to be sentenced. Mark T. Hartvigsen had been on the lam for 12 days. Troopers said he broke into a woman’s room at the Trophy Lodge on the Sterling Highway north of Homer. When she came back, he pulled her own gun on her and forced her at gunpoint to drive north. When they stopped for gas at a Kasilof gas station, the woman alerted an attendant to call 911 while he went inside for cigarettes. Fifteen minutes later, troopers stopped her truck, and on the pretext that she drove erratically, asked her to step out of the truck for field sobriety tests. Troopers arrested Hartvigsen without incident.

— From the issue of June 21, 1990

50 years ago

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, announced that the Economic Development Administration had awarded a $213,000 grant and a $123,000 loan to extend the Homer Harbor dock and construct a new pier. That was to create a horseshoe shaped facility 280 feet long. It was to provide better berthing for the M/V Tustumena and permanent berthing for the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ironwood.

— From the issue of June 18, 1970