The Conservation Fund and Alaska Department of Parks and Outdoor Recreation have recently purchased a new protected property known as Herring Pete’s Cove on the west side of Nuka Island, south of Kenai Fjords National Park on Alaska’s Gulf Coast to expand the Kachemak Bay State Park. The park contains roughly 400,000 acres of land and water, according to the park website and the new newly purchased acquisition adds 24 acres. Nuka Island, in Kenai Fjords National Park, can be accessed by private vessel or potentially by water taxi from Seward. According to Alaska Coastal Safari, a water taxi business in Seward, travel would take 3 to 5 hours from Seward depending on the weather.
Chris Little is Alaska Field Representative for the Conservation Fund. “We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting America's land, water, historic, and cultural resources. And one of the ways we do that is through expertise and purchasing and protecting at-risk lands. So we focus on the priorities of our local partners, and here in the Homer area, our local partners would be the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust and the Kachemak Bay State Park,” Little said.
In a press release from the Conservation Fund, Little described the newly acquired property: “Nuka Island is a rare place on the Kenai Peninsula where visitors can still experience Alaska as remote, wild, and pristine…protecting Nuka Island will help provide safe harbors for boaters, expand access to recreation, and protect spawning grounds and nurseries for fish and wildlife.”
“Certainly, shorebirds and sea birds are found here, as well as marine mammals, and the Herring P. Cove property is adjacent to two salmon streams, pink salmon spawning streams. This area is really rich in fish and wildlife and we're really pleased to be adding this to the park,” he said during a conversation with the radio.
In a several hundred page historic publication, A Stern and Rock Bound Coast, composed in 1998 by authors Linda Cook and Frank Norris and sponsored by the National Park Service, it’s noted that “much has been written about "Herring Pete" Sather over the years, and many old-timers from Seward, Seldovia, Homer and vicinity fondly recall his personality and eccentricities. (One reporter hailed him, late in life, as a man "known the length and breadth of the rugged 49th state as a man who can't stand dry land.) Most remember him as warm-hearted and generous, if a bit quirky. Because he and his wife were the only long-term permanent residents who lived between Caines Head and Portlock during the twentieth century, many recognize that the two were the most important single elements unifying human activity in the fjords country from the mid-1920s until the early 1960s.”
The property was acquired from the University of Alaska and transferred to the Alaska Department of Parks and Outdoor Recreation. Proceeds from the sale will support student scholarships through the university, according to the press release. The University of Alaska is a Land Grant University. Starting in the late 1800s, the land grant system was created throughout the country so that working class people could have access to higher education. In 1915, federal legislation granted land to the Territory of Alaska for the purposes of higher education. There are 106 universities in the country with the “Land Grant” designation. Currently, University of Alaska landholdings total approximately 150,000 acres.
Herring Pete Cove is the third property acquired by the Conservation Fund in Kachemak Bay State Park in the past three years. The other two were the base of the Saddle Trail in Halibut Cove and Mike’s Bay, 24 acres, also on Nuka Island. Little noted some additional public values to the Herring Pete Cove addition:
“It's also, as you know, it's a critical area for safe harbor when folks are making the trek, the boating trek, or the kayak trek from Homer to Seward, the west side of Nuka Island is Nuka Passage, and there are quite a few harbors on the west side of Nuka Island, and acquiring this last piece of Herring Pete's Cove helps to protect one of the best safe anchorages on the west side of New Island, so folks can spend the night there in their boats and enjoy the beautiful scenery that the state park has to offer there.”
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer
