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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,…

Photo courtesy of the Penney Family Collection Mary L. Penney, one of only two women known to have joined the Kings County Mining Company’s 1898 expedition to the gold fields of Alaska.

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Mary Penney and Her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The failed 1898 gold-seeking expedition to the Kenai Peninsula by the Kings County Mining Company has…

Drew O’Brien explores the ruins of the Kings County Mining Company’s cabin near Skilak Lake, circa 1999, about a century after it was constructed alongside a then-unnamed stream. (Photo by Clark Fair)

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Mary Penney and Her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 1

By Clark Fair

Cecil Miller took leave from Akron (Ohio) Police Department to join the U.S. Navy Seabees during World War II. When he returned to the force after his military service, he was featured in an October 1945 article in the Akron Beacon Journal.

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The Man Called ‘Greasy’ — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In 1948, after nearly a quarter-century in law enforcement in Ohio, Cecil Miller, his wife Dorothy…

Photo courtesy of the Pratt Museum During her brief time on the southern Kenai Peninsula, Dorothy Miller, wife of Cecil “Greasy” Miller, was a part of the Anchor Point Homemakers Club. Here, Dorothy (far left, standing) joins fellow area homemakers for a 1950 group shot. Sitting on the sled, in the red blouse, is Dorothy’s daughter, Evelyn, known as “Evie.”

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The Man Called ‘Greasy’ — Part 1

There are several theories concerning the origin of Cecil Miller’s nickname “Greasy.” Many of those notions are probably…