Alaska's cities

Kenai, Alaska

Peninsula spots are more than just fishing towns

By Janet Shapley / Anchorage Daily News correspondent

	Kenai services

If the mouth of the Kenai River is open for dipnetting, this activity is well worth a trek to the beach.

You'll see people standing in the river up to their armpits, with nets outstretched, hoping red salmon will swim their way. It's a frenzy when the fish are really hitting hard.

There are options the rest of the year, too.

In Kenai, you can take a walking tour of Old Town. This begins at the Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center, and takes visitors past 18 historic buildings, which span the eras of the Russians, American military, early civic and commercial buildings and homesteading.

The Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church was built in 1894, and is one of the oldest standing Orthodox churches in Alaska. Church services are still held here regularly.

The Chapel of St. Nicholas was built in 1906 as a tribute to Igumen Nikolai, Kenai's first missionary, who was responsible for bringing the smallpox vaccine to the area. His assistant, Makar Ivanoff, is buried with him under the chapel.

The Moose Range Headquarters was built in 1898 as an Alaska agriculture experiment station, including a residence, barn, woodshed, blacksmith shop and implement shop. The site was used as headquarters for the Kenai National Moose Range -- now the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge -- until 1980, and the World War I Quonset hut was used as staff housing.

Fort Kenay was built in 1967 by a commission celebrating Alaska's purchase in 1867. It is a replica of the Russian Orthodox Church school built in 1900 and is located where Russian Redoubt Nikolaevsk was built in 1791 and where America's Fort Kenay was established by the U.S. Army in 1868.

Many homesteader cabins from the early 1900s are included in the walking tour. The Miller cabin was built in 1910 by Emil Ness in Kasilof, and the logs were dismantled and barged to Kenai in 1930. The Hermansen Miller house was built in 1916 and has been used as a grocery, diner, ice cream parlor, post office, church and Kenai's first hospital/clinic. The Oskolkof/Dolchok cabin, built in 1918, is now Veronica's coffee shop, a great little place to stop for an espresso.

Old Town civic and commercial buildings include the Showalter House, built in 1935 by John Berg, whose wife, Helen, was the local postmistress. The post office was operated out of their home. The Kenai Commercial Building was barged up from Kasilof in 1948, and used as a grocery store.

The first Protestant church in Kenai was the Kenai Bible Church, built in 1946. Its lighted cross can be seen on the bluff by fishermen entering the river after a day of fishing in Cook Inlet.