Path to a parks plan — Soldotna issues draft parks, trails master plan

File photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. A runner in the Kenai River Marathon heads down Bridge Access Road with the mountains flanking Cook Inlet behind her.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

If you live in the Soldotna area and are recreation- or activity-minded, chances are you’ve thought at least one of the following:

It’d sure be nice to have longer stretches to walk along the Kenai River.

It’s too bad the Unity Trail doesn’t continue through Soldotna, so we don’t have to walk, run or ride a bike right alongside the Sterling Highway.

I wish there were an indoor place to walk, or some turf on which to practice soccer before the snow melts.

It’d be great if teens had more maintained, supervised places to hang out and recreate.

Can’t someone do something to make the Sterling-Kenai Spur highways “Y” intersection less of a pain for pedestrians and bicyclists?

Or the big one — it would be so great to get back and forth from Kenai Peninsula College and downtown Soldotna without having to go all the way around Kalifornsky Beach Road to the Sterling Highway to the David Douthit Memorial Bridge over the Kenai River.

Well, Soldotna, that wishful thinking is on a path to being granted, with the Soldotna Parks and Trails planning process nearing completion. After reviewing past planning efforts, meeting with stakeholder and user groups, conferring with partner agencies and organizations, and soliciting input through a public survey, Casey Planning and Design has released a semifinal, 75 percent-complete draft Soldotna Parks and Trails Master Plan.

An open house will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Soldotna Sports Center, where the public can view the draft plan and its recommendations, ask questions and provide feedback. The draft plan, map and associated documents also will be available on the city of Soldotna’s website. The plan is open for review and public comment through May 10. Planners will contact season-specific recreational user groups over the summer — which might not have been thoroughly represented in the survey conducted this winter — for more input, then submit the plan to the city council for approval next fall.

“We want to keep it at a level of ‘What about?’ As opposed to, ‘Why didn’t they?’ At this point it’s still dynamic,” said Andrew Carmichael, city of Soldotna Parks and Recreation director.

28-year library career shelved — Supporters chastise Soldotna city manager, council for dismissal

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Sarah Hondel, daughter of fired Soldotna librarian Terri Burdick, addresses the Soldotna Council Meeting on April 10, including City Manager Mark Dixson and acting Mayor Brenda Hartman.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

The proceedings at the Soldotna City Council meeting April 10 would have been enough to warrant a “Ssshhhhing” from the city librarian — what with bursts of applause, strongly worded admonitions, occasionally raised voices, teary testimonials, desk thumps for emphasis and unhappy grumbles from the packed crowd — had the librarian, a 28-year employee of the city, not been unexpectedly fired first thing the preceding Monday morning, which is what drew the crowd and its outrage to the council meeting.

Terri Burdick, director of the Joyce K. Carver Soldotna Public Library, said that she was dismissed with no warning and no explanation by City Manager Mark Dixson the morning of April 8, before she had a chance to bring in the large, stuffed dinosaur and other accoutrements for the library’s upcoming summer reading program she had picked up — on her dime — in Anchorage over the weekend.

“I haven’t a clue, I really don’t,” she said of what might have caused her dismissal.

Neither did her crowd of supporters.

“Tonight when we started this meeting we started with the Pledge of Allegiance and the last part of the Pledge of Allegiance says, ‘With liberty and justice for all.’ And that word justice has been on my mind a lot the last few days, because it seems so unjust,” said Jeanette Pedginski, who worked with Burdick for two years at the library. “From what I read everything was legal. From what I’ve heard everything was legal. … Even if it’s legal to fire with no cause, it’s morally wrong.”

Soldotna’s municipal code states that staff members in positions exempt from the city’s collective bargaining agreement with employees — including department heads, such as the library director — are not protected by the section of code dictating how dismissals be carried out. Regular employees must receive at least one written notice prior to discharge, and if discharge occurs, an employee must be given a copy of the discharge notice and the reasons for discharge.

But Section 2.30.060 states that, “… An exempt employee may be terminated without cause at any time unless a term, in writing, of the employee’s contract of employment specifically provides otherwise.”

Council chambers were filled with 50 or so supporters of Burdick. The supporters came to express displeasure over Burdick’s dismissal, particularly over the way in which it was carried out.

“Everywhere I see her she is an excellent example of kindness, of caring, of compassion, of love for life, for books, for reading, for children, for culture. I don’t understand why someone who shows that type of effort, drive, love for her community, would be treated in such a way. Every other sort of job that you or I could ever hope to attain all come with certain benefits associated with lifetime dedication. And this is not that,” said Justin Ruffridge, of Soldotna. “… None of you would be expected to be treated like that. It’s a shame, it’s a real shame. I really thought that our town was better than that.”

New view on Soldotna high schools — board votes to consolidate, reconfigure

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Skyview students Austin Laber and James Gallagher gave a presentation advocating keeping the high schools separate.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

It’s official — with a vote of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education at its meeting Monday night, Soldotna and Skyview high schools will be consolidated by fall 2015, and possibly even the year before.

What’s less official is how, exactly, all the details will work out, especially regarding seventh through ninth grades, as the future configuration of those middle school grades has yet to be decided. What was determined Monday is board support for the idea that combining Skyview and SoHi’s 10th through 12th grades into one school is a way to provide diverse course offerings and other opportunities jeopardized by the continuing trend of declining enrollment in the schools.

“The reason we’re doing this is because the opportunities it creates for kids in having a unified high school, and we can’t forget that. And the sooner we can get to that, I think, the better it’s going to be,” said board member Tim Navarre.

According to the district, enrollment at both Skyview and SoHi in the 2006-07 school year was 1,051 students. It’s projected to drop to 815 in the 2013-14 school year and to 766 by 2016-17. But the decline isn’t evenly distributed, with 150 to 160 incoming freshmen expected at SoHi and just 50 at Skyview.

Neither school is housing its designed capacity of students, with Skyview at 323 students this year and SoHi at 472, though neither building is big enough to take on the combined population of all current Soldotna ninth- through 12th-graders. So the district is proposing to house the approximately 600 10th- through 12th-grade students at SoHi, and figure out another plan for the area’s seventh through ninth grades.

“Is there a perfect solution to any of this? Probably not. There are a lot of factors there that need to be put together. Our ultimate goal here is to provide better programs for the kids at the high school level, and this option does that for us,” said Sean Dusek, assistant superintendent of instruction.

Several parents speaking at the 7 p.m. board meeting and during a preceding public hearing at 6 p.m. supported the change if it will mean a more-rounded high school experience.

Scott Miller graduated from SoHi before the newer Skyview opened and the area’s high school population was split. He remembers having several more foreign-language and advanced-placement classes to choose from than do his daughters, currently in grades seven and 10.

“I see the opportunities that I had that my daughters don’t have,” he said.

Amy Hogue, a school district employee and mom with kids in second and fourth grades, sees a similar lack of opportunities, not at all what she would expect in schools serving an urban — by Alaska standards — area.

“When I look at my children’s future and the high school offerings I find it shameful that a city school is not offering a great selection of courses for kids,” she said.

Hogue has seen class offerings decline as enrollment has declined, resulting in a shrinking per-student funding allotment from the state.

“I don’t like the road we’re on. I support the configuration, changing it,” she said. “… Ten years ago this was brought up. I felt 10 years ago we could have made a change and not been where we’re at now.”

Almanac: Extended life span — old Soldotna bridge finds new Canadian home

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of the city of WIlliams Lake. The Rudy Johnson Bridge spans the Fraser River in British Columbia. It once spanned the Kenai River in Soldotna.

Redoubt Reporter

As far as Rudy Johnson was concerned, crossing the river had always been at best an inconvenience and at worst a dangerous maneuver, but when his wife nearly drowned in 1967, that was the last straw. It was time to make this problem go away.

In his home on the Buckskin Ranch across the Fraser River from Williams Lake, British Columbia, Johnson began searching for a solution. Nearly a thousand miles away in rural Southcentral Alaska, he found one.

Thus began a series of logistical migraines. But Johnson was a man accustomed to overcoming obstacles.

Just after World War II, Rudy and Helen Johnson had moved to the plateau between the Fraser River canyon and the Cariboo Mountains in central British Columbia. They started ranching and running a sawmill on Buckskin Creek on the west side of the river, about six miles downstream from Soda Creek, where a cable-operated ferry comprised the nearest available mode of transportation to the river’s eastern bank.

Other similar ferries were available farther north at Alexandra and Marguerite; otherwise, only two bridges spanned the river in a nearly 75-mile stretch between the east-side cities of Williams Lake and Quesnel. Consequently, west-side residents, bearing loads large or small, suffered the inconvenience of driving tens of miles out of their way, or else they confronted the potential risks of the ferry crossings.

In the early days, the Johnsons usually hauled loads of logs to town via the Soda Creek Ferry, a means they preferred over driving the long way on what were often rut-filled, swampy roads.

In winter, when ice choked the Fraser River, west-side residents wishing to gain the other side at Soda Creek had to pull themselves across in a hanging metal cage. In 1948, according to a 2004 Sage Birchwater story in the Williams Lake Tribune, Rudy brought his pregnant wife to the Williams Lake hospital using the Soda Creek cage. Worried that she might give birth during the crossing, Rudy used bailing twine to tie together the bottoms of Helen’s coveralls. They crossed successfully, and Helen gave birth to twins later that day.

But Helen courted disaster in May 1967 when she attempted to help the ferryman at Soda Creek dislodge a log that was blocking the landing.

“She was swept under the ferry but fortunately was able to grab a branch on the other side, and the ferryman pulled her out,” Birchwater wrote. “But this was too much for the rancher.”

Soberg-ing responsibility — Roads foreman oversees big task of building peninsula’s highways

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a multipart story concerning the life and accomplishments of Ralph Soberg, a foreman for the Alaska Road Commission who was in charge of the construction of the Sterling Highway from its junction with the Seward Highway near Tern Lake to its terminus in Homer. This week, Part One introduces Soberg and provides an overview of some early stages in the highway construction. 

By Clark Fair

Photos courtesy of Hardscratch Press. Above and below are images from the dedication of the Sterling Highway at the Soldotna bridge in 1949.

Redoubt Reporter

“Doc” Macdonald earned his nickname because he had studied dentistry before turning to roadbuilding. He was known to the men of the Alaska Road Commission as a capable worker willing to tackle any job. After a tragic incident during the 1948 construction of the original Kenai River bridge in Soldotna, Macdonald also became known as the only casualty incurred during the building of the Sterling Highway.

“Doc was the first and only man I ever witnessed lost on a bridge site,” said Ralph Soberg, foreman for the highway-building project and a veteran of 26 years of building roads and bridges throughout Alaska.

Soberg, writing about the incident in his memoir, “Bridging Alaska,” said that Macdonald had been jarred off his perch — where he was standing atop a piece of steel and holding onto a cable while attempting to help fit a second piece of steel into place. While wearing a belt weighted with bolts and tools, he plummeted into water about 10 feet deep.

“I yelled for someone to get the boat out, and a couple of fellows did, rushing out as fast as they could with a pike pole,” said Soberg, who had also been on the bridge and had attempted unsuccessfully to reach out and grab Macdonald as he fell. “Doc came up just once. I yelled at him to drop his tool belt, and all he said was, ‘I can’t.’ Back down he went. He never came up again.

“The boat got over to him just as he went under. I could see from up above that the crook in the pike pole just missed his neck when they tried to hook on to him. Soon he went down so far I couldn’t see him anymore. We looked for him for three days. … The third day we did hook on to Doc and bring him up.”

The incident temporarily stymied production on the bridge, as a number of the construction crewmembers were reluctant to climb out again over the cold river, but after two days Soberg, who was also grieving, convinced the men that the work had to continue.

Soberg had met Macdonald when they had worked together for the ARC in the Interior in the early 1940s. Macdonald had once helped Soberg with a toothache.

“We had no medical benefits or sick leave in those days,” Soberg said, “and I didn’t want to spend the money to go clear to Anchorage or Fairbanks to see a dentist, so Doc said he’d take care of it for me. He had a foot-operated dentist’s drill … and he got some gold dust from someplace. He ground the tooth down — I took a drink of whiskey once in a while when the pain got too bad — and after several sessions, by golly, he got a crown fixed up and fastened on my tooth. It held for years before it had to be replaced.”

Soldotna: Real good, then — Cheechako reporter covered community with love

By Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter

Edward R. Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein, Helen Thomas, Walter Cronkite, Hunter S. Thompson, Barbara Walters, Jim Lehrer — journalism comes with an extensive pantheon of notable figures, as inescapable for idealistic cub reporters as the inevitable realization that you will likely never make that list, and the eventuality that you will, someday, accidentally print “asses” when you mean “assess.”

Having such an ingrained roster of professional idols is helpful in an aspirational sense, but they’re distant, mythic role models, at best.

How much use is that? Ted Koppel isn’t going to copyedit my page proofs. I can’t call Tim Russert to help me phrase a question to which a political candidate will actually give a straight answer. And some of the pantheon’s most legendary exploits — eliciting tears during interviews, reporting under the influence of hallucinogens, using porn titles as nicknames for sources — don’t exactly constitute a practical how-to guide.

Lucky for me I got to know Katherine Parker, a real, live model of how to be a member of this profession in this particular corner of the universe. Her most prominent traits — moderate, humble, trusting and kind — aren’t conjured by the names above. And her reporting career was conducted in a time and place so far from anywhere considered notable in the mythos of capital-j Journalism as to barely qualify as a suburb of the middle of nowhere.

But she’s meant more to me than any of the inherited roster of reporters I’m supposed to idolize, and my life here has been indelibly enhanced by Katherine, just as Soldotna, her home, has been.

Katherine and Charlie Parker moved to Soldotna in 1961 to homestead on 40 acres atop a hill overlooking the still-infant community. Charlie worked as a surveyor and owner of the Map Shop, and in 1972 Katherine hired on as reporter for the Cheechako News. She became a fixture at public meetings, taking copious notes for her reporting, and chronicled all manner of happenings around town.

Almanac: Sentiment set in stone — Memorial Wall honors pioneers of early Soldotna

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of Al Hershberger. Art Frisbie is shown with one of his many guns in his cabin near the mouth of Cottonwood Creek on Skilak Lake, probably in the 1950s.

Redoubt Reporter

Arthur C. “Art” Frisbie liked telling stories, and he occasionally liked to startle his listeners by stretching the facts, but the truth is that he did live a long life full of adventure, such as the time he accidentally shot himself in the hand or the time he accidentally shot himself through the armpit when he set down his hair-trigger rifle butt-first and it went off.

Frisbie was also at one time the only law officer in Seward. He served in the military near the end of World War II. He worked as a watchman on a fish trap in Southeast Alaska. He trapped during one winter on the Sheenjek River south of the Brooks Range. And he helped fight the massive 1947 Kenai Burn.

An early settler on Skilak Lake — after acquiring George Nelson’s cabin at the mouth of Cottonwood Creek — Frisbie also became one of Soldotna’s earliest residents when he bought 10 acres of Howard Binkley’s property and moved into town. As such, he has earned a place on the pioneers’ Memorial Wall planned by the Soldotna Historical Society at the Soldotna Community Memorial Park.

The wall, according to city of Soldotna documents, “was designed as a way to celebrate the lives of past citizens of the Soldotna area who have been interred in other locations. For those whose hearts will always be in Soldotna, their memory can be brought back home to our community.”

So far, the historical society has a list of more than 70 names of individuals, now deceased, who moved to the Soldotna area after homesteading opened in 1947 and prior to 1955. An additional and much shorter list includes the names of some individuals who are still living but meet the other criteria. The historical society decided on the cutoff date of 1954 in order to control the number of names and ensure that space would be available on the Memorial Wall.

Central to the debate — Soldotna residents to vote on land purchase

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

There is at least one thing both sides of a proposal for the city of Soldotna to buy the Hutchings Auto Group property for use as the city’s visitors center and chamber of commerce office can agree on — a need for planning.

But not quite of the same kind.

Those supporting the purchase talk of a need to think long term about what Soldotna could be in the future, and highlight how the purchase could advance some of those goals — enhancing the development of Soldotna Creek Park while creating a visitors center big enough to show off what Soldotna has to offer, a conference center that could be a hub of activity for residents and a bloom of landscaping to spruce up the otherwise concrete-dominant look of the highway.

“If this opportunity goes by we may never have that chance to go back and do re-planning, because cities just kind of grow and then, 30 years later, you go, ‘You know, we should have planned that a little better.’ This is a chance to kind of go back and redo that,’” said Michelle Glaves, executive director of the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce, which runs the city-owned visitors center.

Those with concerns about the proposed purchase, however, say more planning should go into the immediate decision in order to avoid what they see as a potential boondoggle of traffic jams and irresponsibly spent tax dollars.

“I don’t know that I’m totally opposed to it, but there’s just, for me, tons and tons of questions that aren’t answered, and that’s what frustrates me,” said Norm Blakely, who owns Blakeley’s Trading and Loan in Soldotna. “I don’t think they’ve done their homework. If they’re going to spend tax dollars let’s, for once in our lives, spend it wisely and let people know what’s going on.”

The Soldotna City Council approved a measure March 28 to purchase the 3.12-acre parcel at 44075 Sterling Highway, owned by David and Linda Hutchings, and the approximately 20,000-square-foot building that has operated as Hutchings Auto Group, for $2.1 million. The purpose is to relocate the Soldotna Visitors Center and chamber of commerce office from its current 800-square-foot facility at the intersection of the Sterling Highway and Kalifornsky Beach Road.

Because of the amount involved, the decision must go before Soldotna voters for ratification. The city is holding a special election Tuesday, May 1, with absentee voting ongoing since April 16.

Whether to check “yes” or “no” on the ballot is the ultimate question facing Soldotna voters, but that decision will likely be informed by the many other questions surrounding the issue. Such as:

Where to sit the seat of government? Borough Building starts from gravelly beginning

Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a multipart story about the origin of the Borough Administration Building and the establishment of Soldotna as the seat of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. This week’s article reveals, in part, how the Borough Building property became available in the first place.

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of Al Hershberger. This 1960 aerial photo of Soldotna shows the “scar” formed by the Soldotna Gravel Pit, where the Borough Administration Building now sits. Other interesting notes: To the left of the gravel pit is a large Quonset hut, which at this time was the Soldotna Theatre. In the lower right corner of the photo is Soldotna Elementary School’s first four classes under construction — the school would open to students in the fall — and, nearby, the barn that once made up part of Joe Faa’s corral, for which Corral Street was later named. Beyond the trees behind the gravel pit, the old Soldotna airstrip can be seen paralleling the Sterling Highway, which leads south to the old girdered bridge spanning the Kenai River.

Redoubt Reporter

At 148 N. Binkley Street, which was just a gravel-covered Soldotna back road in November 1969, construction on the new administration building for the 5-year-old Kenai Peninsula Borough seemed to be progressing well when a setback occurred.

On Nov. 29, a Page 1 headline in the Cheechako News alerted the public: “Borough Building Panels Lost in Storm at Sea.” Although this was certainly the most dramatic event in the borough’s seven-year effort to establish its sense of place, it was far from being the only twist or turn in a tale that dips at least one tentative toe back into the stream of the late 1940s.

In 1947, Howard and Maxine Lee read a Saturday Evening Post article about the homesteading opportunities for military veterans willing to move to the Kenai Peninsula. It sounded simple enough: Go to the Anchorage Land Office, file on a suitable parcel, build a habitable abode, live on the land at least six months and a day out of the year, and clear one-tenth of the total acreage.

Stationed with the Navy in Florida at the time, the Lees headed north in March 1948. Leaving Maxine and their 16-month-old daughter, Karen, in Seattle, Howard arrived in Anchorage only to discover that all the land abutting the new Sterling Highway had already been claimed.

Dispirited at first, Howard then learned of a couple who had gone to the area the year before, spent the winter, and wanted out. The couple had hauled a 60-by-30-foot Quonset hut over the frozen highway, and Howard was told that for $1,000 they would relinquish their site and the Quonset hut to him.

Thus, when Maxine and Karen joined him at their new home in June, the Lees became residents of the fledgling community of Soldotna. Their homestead encompassed the current sites of the Borough Building, Soldotna Elementary School, Soldotna City Hall, Dr. Tom Kobylarz’s dental office and Cad-re Feed west of the Kenai Spur, and to the east much of the low area around the Cottonwood Health Center and Blakeley’s Auction Company.

The Lees, like many homesteaders in those days, led a hardscrabble life, but they began to prosper. In 1949, Maxine became Soldotna’s first postmaster and served in that capacity for two years when, abruptly — or so it seemed to many at the time — she decided she had had enough.

Maxine turned her postmaster duties over to Mickey Faa, and she then took her two children to the Lower 48 and filed for divorce. In the settlement, she and Howard split the homestead, with Howard retaining all of the property west of the Spur Highway.

Road upgrade process needs work — Soldotna to reconsider special assessment district rules

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Brian Shackleton. Lingonberry Lane, along the Kenai River near Swiftwater Park in Soldotna, disintegrates into muddy ruts in the spring. Residents are hoping to get the rustic road upgraded.

Redoubt Reporter

Soldotna’s special assessment district process isn’t in as bad a shape as Lingonberry Lane becomes during breakup, but it, like the road, could use some improvement.

That was the consensus after the Soldotna City Council dealt with a petition from the neighborhood to form a special assessment district to upgrade the rustic road.

The council decided in a meeting Oct. 12 not to go ahead with the petition. Though the special assessment district process had only barely begun, the issue had gone far enough to determine that the policy could use some attention.

“This was my first SAD in the two years I’ve been on the council and it certainly raised an eyebrow on how things should be working. I’m not happy that a minority group of people can force the majority to do something, even though the way our current SAD reads, they can,” said council member Dale Bagley.

The issue came to the council over the summer, though problems with the road have been ongoing long before that. Lingonberry parallels the Kenai River and is used to access property in the Mullen Homestead and New Morning subdivisions, sandwiched between the Kenai River to the south, Swiftwater Park to the east, East Redoubt Avenue to the north and the Soldotna “Y” corridor to the west. This summer, it became a division running through neighborhood residents.

The road is a built-up version of first an airstrip, then a dirt track Marge and Frank Mullen put in to access the property they homesteaded since 1947. Some improvements have been made over the years — particularly when the road was extended to link up with Swiftwater Park Campground Road about 12 years ago, to allow neighborhood access from the east, rather than over the narrow, degrading bridge over Soldotna Creek to the west, which didn’t accommodate fire trucks or ambulances.

But it was not built to city road standards of today. To be fair, there was no city of Soldotna until it was incorporated in 1960, much less enforced road-building standards. Depending on conditions, the road is a bumpy ride to a tire-swallowing mud hole, and residents agree that they would like it upgraded.

There is not agreement over how to upgrade it, however. Likely to be the least-costly option would involve the neighbors deciding amongst themselves what level of improvement they’d like and hiring a private contractor to do the work. But that would mean maintenance — grading, plowing, etc. — would continue to be managed amongst the neighbors, and some residents think the road has not been adequately maintained in the past.

Marge Mullen has overseen the responsibility of arranging plowing, grading, etc., and collecting payment from neighborhood residents. That system isn’t ideal, for Mullen or neighbors who think more maintenance should be done.

“It’s like a Third World country,” said Billie Shackleton of the state of the road. “I’ve lived here 15 years and it’s always been a hassle. It wasn’t put in right in the first place, and so we are trying to fix it.”

“Mom has been doing that pretty much singlehandedly for pretty much 25 years. Hopefully someone else will step up and take that job out of her hands,” said Marge’s son, Frank Mullen, of Homer, who owns a parcel in the neighborhood. “It’s been kind of a nightmare because people don’t always pay, or sometimes they pay late. Of course, somebody needs to do it. Personally, I hope somebody volunteers to take on that responsibility and let my mom have a little peace and quiet.”

Almanac: Cache with cachet — Soldotna museum installs historic structure

By Clark Fair

Photo by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter. City of Soldotna maintenance workers Gary Conradi, left, and Lou Ouldhouse use special long bolts to bind the cache to its support posts at the Soldotna Historical Society Homestead Museum on Nov. 1.

Redoubt Reporter

The Soldotna Historical Society likes to bill its facility on Centennial Park Road as a homestead museum, but on a blustery Tuesday of last week, the big to-do there concerned a decidedly nontraditional homesteading item: a log cache.

Still, the men and the machines working among the swaying birch trees were on a mission to help with the preservation of history. The log cache had been constructed in the early 1970s by popular area builder Johnny Parks and had been donated to the Soldotna Historical Society in its fledgling days of the mid-1980s.

The cache had stood for many years next to the Ira Little homestead cabin on the historical society’s walking trail, but when the local weather took its toll and the cache began to deteriorate badly, rental equipment was used in 2009 to lift it from its perch of creosoted posts and crossbeams and haul it to Soldotna High School, where plans had called for it to be the project of a vocational education class.

In the end, however, the project was delayed until the end of the school year, when shop teacher Doug Gordon made the needed repairs to the structure’s roof, floor and several wall logs. After the repairs had been completed, the cache was returned to museum property, where it sat along the driveway next to the Damon Building, awaiting the arrangement of manpower to hoist it back into position.

Almanac: Horsepower — real horse power

By Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

In autumn 1959, when moose-hunting season was about to open on the Kenai Peninsula and exploration and oil-drilling activity were still going full-tilt on the Swanson River Field, the Standard Oil Company of California posted a sign near its peninsula operations that read, “Please don’t shoot horses or men.”

Most hunters at the time were likely aware that the booming oil business on the Kenai National Moose Range meant that men were scattered throughout the area, and they certainly hoped to encounter plenty of moose. But aside from tales of moose and men, few of them must have expected to encounter any horseflesh.

However, the sign was there for a reason.

According to a 1959 article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the Western Operations section of Standard Oil was using horses to pull seismic equipment in the moose- and hunter-infested area west of the Swanson River unit.

The horses were necessary because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which controlled the moose range (as it now controls the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge), prohibited the use of mechanical vehicles there during the months in which the ground cover was expected to be soft and therefore susceptible to damage.

Standard Oil was allowed to move equipment via helicopters, but the company opted for horse power over chopper power, largely because of the expense and the frequent unavailability of large helicopters when especially heavy or bulky equipment needed to be moved.

The News-Miner said that Standard Oil’s use of horses was the second such effort in Alaska in recent months. The first involved Nikiski-based independent oilman, Mike Halbouty, who had used a horse-drawn rig to haul seismic survey equipment.

Halbouty had covered approximately 20,000 acres with seismic surveys, and he employed three teams of horses to pull rubber-tired wagons filled with recording and drilling equipment. In addition, 10 pack horses hauled cables, geophones and water for drilling.

Although Halbouty’s method meant no tracks of motorized vehicles on the moose range, it certainly meant plenty of horse tracks.