AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lawrence and Lorna Keeler and their family left Oregon in June 1948, and began driving to what would become their new home on the southern Kenai Peninsula. By 1951, they had sold their Anchor Point property and moved to a homestead near Stariski Creek. Around this time, they welcomed another former Anchor Point resident into their household.
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.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Over a four-year period beginning in 1947, three siblings from Oregon’s large Keeler family settled on the Kenai Peninsula. Lawrence Keeler and his young family came to Anchor Point and homesteaded near the mouth of the Anchor River. Lawrence’s youngest sister, Verona, and her husband, Don Wilson, moved to Soldotna and became business owners. And Lawrence and Verona’s oldest brother, Floyd, along with three of his adult children, found land just east of Soldotna and filed four homestead claims. This is the story of the Keelers who came to the Kenai and the trials they faced and the triumphs they had along the way.