AUTHOR’S NOTE: This first chapter of the Rex Hanks story includes many other individuals and numerous actions and transactions. It is helpful, therefore, to know a little background: The main action takes place in Happy Valley, located between Anchor Point and Ninilchik on the southern Kenai Peninsula. Of the “characters” in this tale, Rex Hanks, in May 1946, was the first to file on a homestead. A week later, his friend, Clyde Thomas, filed on an adjacent homestead. Two years after that, Homer and Nell Crosby also filed in the same area. By 1953, much had changed: Thomas was dead. Hanks had sold his homestead, bought a small piece of Crosby property, moved away to find work and gotten married. The Crosbys had also left the valley, moved to the Anchorage area and begun trying to sell the rest of their homestead. Meanwhile, in Eagle River, Mac and Ella McGann were eyeing the Kenai for homesteading possibilities.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lawrence and Lorna Keeler, along with their three children and Lawrence’s older brother Floyd, left Oregon on June 3, 1948, and began driving to what would become their new home on the southern Kenai Peninsula. By late June, Lawrence and Lorna were in Kenai, working in a cannery to earn enough money to afford transportation to the Anchor River.