Category: Kenai Peninsula

Kenai Peninsula – Part of Southcentral Alaska – Peninsula south of Municipality of Anchorage

K-6 gillnetter is a reminder of Kenai’s long fishing history

One of the earliest commercial transactions involving Alaska salmon occurred in 1786. In that year two British ships stopped in Cook Inlet, which was then under Russian-American Company control, to trade Hawaiian yams for...

Inlet Trading Company building in Homer, built in 1937

Old Town section of Homer experiences a renaissance

“Old Town” Homer is located on the benchlands of Kachemak Bay’s north shore, southwest of modern Homer’s business district. The Sterling Highway delineates the area’s northern boundary, with Bishop’s Beach to the south, and...

The Seward depot as it looked during winter in the early 1920s, when it was still located near the foot of Adams Street.

Old depot is a monument to Seward’s survival as a railroad town

The old railroad depot in Seward is testament to the travails the city has gone through as a railroad town. Although constructed in 1917, the depot’s history can be traced back to the advent...

This is the cabin that Nellie and Billie Lawing disassembled and floated to their Roadhouse location at Kenai Lake. Once reassembled they used it as a cafe. It and three other Lawing buildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Alaska Nellie was an Alaska legend

Nellie Neal Lawing was born in 1873 and grew up on a Missouri farm. According to her 1940 autobiography, “Alaska Nellie,” since childhood she had an adventuresome spirit, and her mother called her “half...

Most likely, the old storage structure at Lawing on the eastern shore of Kenai Lake was originally a railroad work crew housing unit, capable of being transported on a flat car.

Railroads played important part in the development of Lake Kenai’s eastern shore

Kenai Lake, located 20 miles north of Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula, has hosted visitors since the early 1900s. During the Cook Inlet gold rush in the mid to late 1890s a winter-only...

The 116-year-old Ballaine House in Seward home to Frank Ballaine, brother of the founder of Seward, John Ballaine. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Seward’s Ballaine House is reflection of flush days of Alaska Central Railway

John Ballaine was the entrepreneur primarily responsible for initiating construction of the Alaska Central Railway (ACR) across the Kenai Peninsula. He is also credited with founding the town on Seward, the southern terminus of...

Old Cooper Landing store and post office now tell area’s history as a museum

Old Cooper Landing store and post office now tell area’s history as a museum

The hamlet of Cooper Landing, on the banks of the Kenai River just west of Kenai Lake, is one of the Kenai Peninsula’s recreation meccas. The community traces its history back to the 1896-97...

Seward’s Brown & Hawkins Store still standing after 117 years

Charles E. Brown and Thomas William “T.W.” Hawkins both came to Alaska in 1898. Brown entered the territory via the route pioneered by the Hudson’s Bay Company – the McKenzie, Rat and Porcupine rivers,...

Talkeetna and the Alaska Commercial Company’s freighting gamble

Seward’s Jesse Lee Home fades to nothing with demolition of buildings

Seward’s Jesse Lee Home For Children passed into history at the end of 2020 when its remaining buildings were demolished. The first Jesse Lee Home, an orphanage and boarding school for Aleut children, opened...