20/06/2023
I am excited to announce the completion of the Footprints Around Cooper Landing Sign Project and share a bit of Cooper Landing's history with everyone. The project goal was to highlight five significant community sites and document the story of how they came to be. At first, I naively thought it was going to be a breeze to type up a few paragraphs, add a couple of photos, bada-bing bada- boom, project complete…but boy was I wrong.
As the Cooper Landing Youth Group and I began to write down pieces for the signs, it became apparent that many of the details about the specific components we were looking for were not readily available. I quickly discovered that these stories have never been specifically written down. The information wasn’t something one could Google and find results for.
The most important part of the project was now getting the details written down, concisely in one place. The project became a giant puzzle. I felt like Gandalf digging through multiple historic archives and sources searching for information about the one-ring. Thankfully, Mona Painter, town historian, had the foresight to save so many pieces of excellent information over the years and has a great memory about the community’s origin. And thankfully, Sandra Holsten is a wizard at researching and interpreting ancestry records. Without these two ladies, the signs would never have come to fruition. I am so grateful to the time they committed to helping me see this project through!
One article led to another and eventually the signs came together. This project was made possible through our partnership with the Cooper Landing Community Club, Cooper Landing Youth Group, Cooper Landing Historic Society, and the Kenai Mountains-Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area
Thank you to Virginia, Dave, Martha, Erik, and Cory for editing the drafts for readability and grammar. Also, thank you to the youth group for sticking with this challenge and for learning the local history of your hometown. Finally, a special thank you to KMTA for awarding our community the grant funding to print the signs and for continuously supporting the historic preservation of the Kenai Peninsula. To find out more about KMTA and the work they do visit their website at: www.kmtacorridor.org
