From pre-history to today's residents, the southern Kenai Peninsula draws people from all over the world. Some come for a vacation. Others to visit family and friends. Others, like the 5,400 who live here today, decide to make it home.
The Harrington homestead cabin was built in the mid-1930's
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5,000 years ago: The age of stone tools belonging to the Ocean Bay people and found by archaeologists.
3,000 years ago: The age of tools left by the Kachemak Tradition Eskimos.
3,000-1,000 years ago: The age of pictographs possibly created by Dena'ina.
1700s: Furs and fish draw Russians into the area.
1800s: Coal deposits along Kachemak Bay's north shore attract the North Pacific Mining and Transportation Co. and the Alaska Coal Co. A standard gauge railroad runs on a 7.5-mile track from the coal mine to the dock on the Spit.
1896: Gold takes center stage. The city's namesake, Homer Pennock, organizes new arrivals for the Alaska Gold Mining Co.
1920s: Fox farming and fishing boost the local economy, followed by the herring fishery in Halibut Cove, with salmon, crab and halibut fisheries in the bay and Cook Inlet.
1915: Charles Miller stakes one of the first homesteads in the area. It is near the spot where Kachemak Drive meets East End Road.
1938: A new dock is built by the Homer Dock Association, after exceptionally heavy winter ice destroys the Cook Inlet Coal Co. dock.
1947: The new dock is destroyed by another severe winter. A new one is eventually rebuilt by the territorial government and supported by Homer taxes.
1950: The Sterling Highway is completed, connecting Homer with the rest of the continent.
1964: Homer elects its first mayor, Ralph Cowles, after whom today's city council chambers gets its name.
1964: The infamous March 26 Good Friday Earthquake shakes Alaska with a staggering magnitude of 9.2. Although centered in Prince William Sound, northeast of Homer, it causes the Spit to drop seven feet, taking with it tall trees and grasslands where cattle and
horses once grazed. Spit Road is reconstructed over a period of six years at a cost of $6.7 million. What exists today is higher, wider and paved. However, heavy seas and high tides are constant reminders of Mother's Nature's power.
2002: Pioneer Dock is built near the end of the Spit, offering moorage for the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Hickory, state ferries, research vessels and cruise ships.
