Up until today, the Ninilchik Beach has been fairly quiet. Yesterday a group of locals arrived and set up a fishing camp next to us complete with freezer and a generator to power the freezer. They will be here two weeks to catch their winter’s supply of fish.
Yesterday we drove to Homer for lunch and groceries.
Homer was named for Homer Pennock, a gold mining company promoter, who arrived in 1896 on the Homer Spit and built living quarters for his crew of 50 men. However, gold mining was never profitable in the area.
Coal was discovered in the area in the 1890s. The Cook Inlet Coal Fields Company built a town, dock, coal mine, and a railroad at Homer. Coal mining in the area continued until World War II. There are an estimated 400 million tons of coal deposits still in the area. Large junks of coal are deposited on the beaches by the tides. During low tide, locals drive on the beach and harvest the coal for heating in the winter.
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