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The Homer News sign hangs on the outside of the newspaper’s former office building on Landings Street on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

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Looking back on Landings Street

As Homer News moves to a new building, former and current employees reflect on changes

Photo courtesy of the Nutter Family Collection Posing in front of Warren Melville Nutter’s large home in Hope in about 1961 are (L-R): Warren Nutter’s only biological child, David; David’s younger half-brother Frank Gwartney, and Nutter himself. After Nutter died in 1962, his Hope property was split between the two boys.

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Finding Mister Nutter — Part 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Warren Melville Nutter spent the final 32 years of his life on the Kenai Peninsula, working…

An aerial view of old town Cordova is displayed on the wall of the Pioneers of Alaska Igloo No. 19, established in 1918, during a tour of the Igloo at the Alaska Historical Society Conference in October 2024.  (Emilie Springer/Homer News)

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Annual Alaska Historical Society conference tackles ‘Rights and Responsibilities’

The event was hosted in Cordova

This photo of Warren Melville Nutter, holding a dead juvenile bald eagle that he shot for the bounty, appeared in the May 1938 edition of The Alaska Sportsman Magazine. The photo was probably taken near the mouth of Hidden Creek on Skilak Lake.

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Finding Mister Nutter — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: After more than two decades serving in the military and teaching in various classrooms, Warren Melville…

This is a display of some of the hunting items that Warren Melville Nutter carried when he moved to Alaska in the summer of 1930. (Photo courtesy of the Nutter Family Collection)

Community

Finding Mister Nutter — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: On the Kenai Peninsula, Warren Melville Nutter would become known primarily as a premiere bounty trapper…

Public photo from ancestry.com Gilbert Witt, pictured here in about 1930, was the troubled first husband of Muriel Grunert, who later married Warren Melville Nutter.

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Finding Mister Nutter — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Warren Melville Nutter — known by many residents of the Kenai Peninsula as “William” or “Bill”…

Warren Melville Nutter, seen here holding a black bear cub in an undated photo likely taken in Hope, lived nearly half of his life on the Kenai Peninsula. (Photo courtesy of the Nutter Family Collection)

Community

Finding Mister Nutter — Part 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE: My search for Warren Melville Nutter began as part of a book project with former backcountry…

Dorris James, who will turn 100 on Sept. 28, 2024, displays a crocheted tablecloth that she made several decades ago. The photo was taken on Sept. 11, 2024, at her daughter’s home in Homer, Alaska. (Emilie Springer/ Homer News)

Community

A century of Alaska memories

Homer homesteader Dorris James turns 100

Photo courtesy of the John Secora Collection Joseph Secora was one of few individuals to live year-round on Tustumena Lake. He placer mined for gold on Indian Creek and completed three cabins in the area.

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Cosmopolitan Tustumena — Part 2

In 1880, before anyone was recorded as a resident on Tustumena Lake, the U.S. Census noted the general…

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…

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.

Community

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…