Page 2 - Ira Spring News Today

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Most of the people who came to homestead and stayed long term on the central Kenai Peninsula created a circle of friends and acquaintances and found ways to contribute to the greater society around them. This was true of Larry and Rusty Lancashire, who came to make themselves a home on Pickle Hill in Ridgeway in 1948. In almost no time at all, they were integrating themselves into their newfound community.

Rusty and the three Lancashire daughters arrived in Kenai on June 19

AUTHOR’S NOTE: By the first of August 1948, Larry and Rusty Lancashire and their three daughters (Martha, Lori and Abby) were well under way in building a new and independent life on their homestead on Pickle Hill. Living in a wall tent not far from the new Kenai Spur Road, they were erecting a sawmill and a cabin farther back in the woods. They had hand-dug a water well and were awaiting a pump.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: By March 1948, a month before his 30th birthday, Larry Lancashire had already experienced an eventful adulthood. He had flown numerous missions as a bomber pilot in World War II, had been shot down by Axis forces and captured as a prisoner of war, had married his sweetheart Rusty and produced three young daughters, and had driven — with the company of only Tuto, his springer spaniel — from Ohio to Alaska to begin building a home and a life for his family.

Mrs. Lancashire certainly didn’t fit Lee’s notion of what a homesteading woman should look like.

In the summer of 1948, while Soldotna homesteader Howard Lee was helping Ridgeway homesteader Larry Lancashire build a cabin, he got his first glimpse of Larry’s wife, Rusty: “She was right off Madison Avenue, so to speak,” said Lee in a 1991 interview, “in her natty suit, silk stockings, high heels, etc.”

The Washington State Capitol campus Territorial Sundail was created by John Elliott to honor Washington's history for the State Library dedication.

West Seattle news, 24/7

West Seattle news, 24/7

Fred Beckey passed away five years ago at age 94 and he was climbing right to the end. He was much celebrated while he was alive