"Pa" Russell and Rod
Mariott Head to Homer
William Wakeland Collection
Pratt Museum Photo Archives |
Homesteaders lived a rugged life simply. They gathered
coal and seafood from the shores. They harvested potatoes
and cabbage, game and firewood from the land, and
made do with remarkable ingenuity. Charlie Miller
filed for one of Homer's first homestead applications
in 1915. Log cabins sprang up - first on benchland
by the sea, a decade later on the hills above town.
By 1930, there were 78 homestead entries, but only
34 would become patented.
In the mid 1940s, a wave of soldiers back from WWII,
encouraged by a veterans' homestead offering, headed
north to find both peace and opportunity in the isolation
of wilderness.
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Section
of the Homer Homestead Map, Created by Steve Baird,
KBRR
Based on Charles Abbott General Land Layout Map 23 September
1946
21" x 30" map sold at Eagle Eye Photo,
907-235-8525
Download
Full Map (5 MB PDF file)
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Winnie Zawistowski
and Pelts
Pratt Museum Photo Archives |
Husbanders, fox farmers, and fishermen carved from the
land and sea a self-sufficient life. Cool weather and cold
soils, a rainy hay season, and unstable markets worked against
financial success. Still, many tried raising bees, cattle,
chickens, goats, turkeys, horses, rabbits, sheep, and fox.
Gardens yielded sustenance. In the rich glacial till and
long summer light, cabbages grew three to a wheelbarrow.
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