Waterman Family Photo Album

John with his beautiful farm produce John Waterman Collection, Pratt Museum Photo Archives

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I walked over Olsen Mountain …all the way to the Fox River that way and all the way to Anchor Point … I couldn't see a place I wanted.

In 1942, John Waterman did not have an easy time finding the perfect land to settle. His fortune turned, however, while he was working as a pole climber at the Red Mountain chrome mines on the far side of Kachemak Bay. Balancing on a long mining pole 40 feet above the ground, John met the man who would lead him to his homestead site.

Mr. Bronson, a fellow pole climber, invited John to dinner at his place in Homer. Bronson pointed out land that was open for settlement just six miles out East End Road. Waterman immediately knew that the 40 acres of rolling meadows would be his spot. Proving up the homestead as his own property, by tilling land and building a liveable home, took 5 years "on account of the difficulty of building" as supplies were not easy to come by.

You came to Homer by steamer, and if you came to Homer, you brought material to build what you wanted to build…if you wanted a cow, why, you brought a cow, along with some cow feed.

Now called Waterman Canyon, the land John and his wife Edith farmed produced a bounty of vegetables. With several other homesteaders, John organized the Homer Co-op that shipped lettuce, potatoes, eggs and other produce to Kodiak in the 1940s. Though the perfect homestead land was not easy to find, it was certainly worth the wait.

What stories can you read in these early settlers' eyes?