Cooper Landing Gem- July 2023

Happy Fourth of July!

Is summer here? I know we had two days of summer, but where is the rest? The first run of the reds has been going strong. They don’t mind the clouds and the wind. I hope that all of you are enjoying the increase in traffic and tourists.

There is a meeting about the CLES proposal for a service area which I hope as a resident of Cooper Landing that you attend It is a very important issue for the community.

It has been written in another article that the Bypass Project has a bit of a funding issue. The project might have to extend out the completion date.

Please keep in mind that we are looking for members who are willing to serve on the board of directors. We will not formally meet until September and we will be calling if we haven’t heard from you. September is the time for dues, and renewing advertising for the Upper Kenai River Guide. Plan for it please. Looking forward to talking with you soon.

Cooper Landing Library News

Bee Wilson’s Little Free Library

Stop by and check out the Little Free Library and the bench on the porch. This was installed in memory of Bee Wilson, who was the volunteer Director for many years. We would like to thank Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge for donating the materials and time to build and install these for us. We are so pleased with the result.

Book Club:

• July 18 Turn Again by Kris Farmen

7 pm at Ann Hanson’s home

35360 Just Bears Ct.

• August 15 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

7pm at Cooper Landing Community Library

Library Hours

Monday 1-3 pm

Tuesday 1-3 and 5-7 pm

Wednesday 1-3 pm

Thursday 1-3 pm

Friday 1-3 pm

Saturday 11 am - 2 pm

Sunrise Happenings

Are you looking for a fun evening activity? Come on down to Sunrise to test your knowledge at Trivia Night on Monday’s at 9pm. Bring your friends, each team can have up to four players. Compete in five rounds and earn points to become the weekly winner. The final round is a challenging audio music round.

Contact Us: info@sunriseinnak.com

www.sunriseinnak.com

Sunrise Inn Alaska

Cooper Landing Advisory Planning Commission (CLAPC)

The next Cooper Landing Advisory Planning Commission (CLAPC) meeting is scheduled for July 12th. We do not know at this time if there are any agenda items but if there are you’ll see the draft agenda posted in the Cooper Landing Crier online and physically around town on bulletin boards.

If you are unable to attend a meeting either via Zoom or in person then you may send us a written message one of two ways:

1. For email visit: https://www.kpb.us/planning-dept/planning-commissions/cooper-landingapc/email-cooper-landing-apc

2. USPS mailing: Send your correspondence to Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Department, Attn: CLAPC, 144 N Binkley St., Soldotna, AK 99669.

Unit 395 Comments Due

Please recall that the Unit 395 draft plan is now available for public comment. It can be accessed via the project website (https://www.unit395planning.com/plan-draft). Please leave a comment through the website or by emailing megan.flory@respec.com. The comment period will be open for 45 days after the June 7th CLAPC meeting, closing at midnight on July 22.

Footprints Around Cooper Landing Sign Project

Best Route Productions

I am excited to announce the completion of the Footprints Around Cooper Landing 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...

Newly installed signs at the Cooper Landing Cemetery depicting the history of how it came to be.

The project became a giant puzzle. I felt like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings digging through multiple historic archives and sources searching for information about the onering. 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 MountainsTurnagain Arm National Heritage Area (KMTA).

Thank you to Virginia Morgan, Dave and Martha Story, and Erik and Cory Route for editing the drafts for readability and grammar. Thank you to the youth group for sticking with this challenge and for learning the local history of your hometown. Thank you to Kate Stevenson and Connie Loveall for the flower and rock work they did around the signs at the Museum. Also, thank you to Impact Signs and Graphics for printing and installing the signs. 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: kmtacorridor.org

Cooper Landing Youth Group meeting with Mona Painter during a visit to the Cooper Landing Museum.

Athena, Sydney, and Natalie learning how to create design layouts to scale to get an idea of how to place items on the sign.

Visit the Cooper Landing Museum, Community Club, and Cemetery to view the five new interpretive signs. Each sign brings to light some of the lesser-known details about community members, buildings, and places that shaped the town into what it is today.

Cooper Landing Community Club

Dear Cooper Landing Community Members,

It is so wonderful to see our summer season is up and running strong for our local businesses and residents! With that in mind, there are now mostly weddings, reunions and meetings being held at our Community Hall until the Fall. Your CLCC Board is busy wrapping up the paperwork to be submitted for the KPB Revenue Sharing program and acquiring equipment for the OWL Meeting system that we are able to purchase through being awarded a Kenai Peninsula Community Grant.

We also would like to send out a HUGE THANK YOU to all who made the 2023 Softball Tournament a fun filled successful event. We are very grateful to those who made it possible And for those organizations who helped out with concessions during the tournament, you each earned close to $700 for your hard work and participation. Well Done!

Thank you to Kenai Princess Lodge (Alison Neeld, Tracy Smith and Angel Bond) for supplying the most delicious burgers, hot dogs, buns, and sponsoring a rib night to feed our spectators and players. Thank you to Wildmans (Cheryle James) for supplying a cooler, onions, many supplies, and helping us with chips,pretzels, ice cream and sodas.

Thank you Alaska Wildland Adventures (David Story) for making our burgers complete with lettuce and tomatoes. We also would like to thank Two Brothers Roadhouse for their donation of pulled pork sandwiches, always a hit with everyone!

Thank you to our concession workers supplied by the Cooper Landing Chamber, Cooper Landing Senior Citizens Corporation, Inc., the Youth Group Committee, Cooper Landing Emergency Services, Cooper Landing Trails Committee and the Cooper Landing Library. People would have starved if you hadn’t been there to help serve!

Thank you to all those who donated to our Silent Auction. This is one of our major fund raisers for the Community Club and we were overwhelmed with everyone’s generosity as well as those who donated by bidding on items.

Youth Group “Harry Potter” Concession Night

Future winner of the Most Home Runs.

Dave Westerman fixing the pavilion roof.

Thank you to Dan Michels, who year after year, supplies his passion for the game in coordinating teams, umps, scorekeepers and maintenance on and around the field. Thank you Jim Carlson, Dave Westerman, Dave & Martha Story, and the others who helped prep the field before our games. (A shout out to Dave Westerman as well who repaired and cleaned the pavilion roof after a wayward visitor accidentally tagged it with their motorhome!) Thank you to John James, Olive James, Ryan Altman and Nick Vanderhof for manning the board and Ann Hanson, Theresa Norris, and Glen Parker for keeping score. Thank you to John Thomas & Ed Holsten for announcing. We also appreciate John Thomas and Rachel Altman for singing the national anthem at the start of each game.

Thank you to John and Julie Almarode, who after everyone was gone, kept the field and parking lot clean, as well as hauled our trash out for us. Thank you to our teams and the players for supplying umps and providing all of us an escape for 10 days. Hats off to Mountain Madness for second place, and Two Brothers Road House, Alaska River Adventures, Alaska Wildland Adventures, Kenai Princess Lodge, Alaska Rivers Company, the Bean Creakers for all your energy, enthusiasm and sore muscles! We also thoroughly enjoyed the first ever kids game, featuring our Cooper Landing youth beating the Bean Creekers! Thank you Shayla Swain, Paige Booze and Dan Michels for making that happen.

Lastly, Congratulations to Candy Fitzpatrick for winning the Split the Pot and to MooseAlanche for being the 2023 Cooper Landing Softball Tournament Champions! Well played!

The Cooper Landing Community Club Board

-Yvette, Melissa, Ruth, Lorraine and Ed

MooseAlanche reclaims the trophy once again.

4th of July Parade

Come join us for the 4th of July Parade at the Kenai Princess Lodge. We welcome all floats, boats, automobiles, bikes and walkers to participate in the parade! We look forward to seeing everyone come out for our annual event, of course we will be serving ice cream afterwards!

The parade will start at 4 pm and we ask that everyone start lining up at the warehouse parking lot at 3:30pm.

Any questions please call the lodge 907-595-1425.

We’ll Miss You Ladonna

We hosted a going away party for Ladonna Herbert on June 29. It was a very well-attended get together. Ladonna is moving to Salem, Oregon. If you’d like to keep in touch with Ladonna contact us and we will give you her new address.

Sexy Senior Dumpster Cleaners continue to go out to work in Cooper Landing, at Crown Point past Moose Pass, and in Hope every Monday. We meet at Kenai Lake Baptist Church parking lot and leave there at 9:45 in the senior bus. Lore Defrance cleans the site in Hope. CLSCCI

looking for a maintenance person to do many different tasks at Snug Harbor Senior Haven.

Cooper Landing Senior Citizen Corp. Inc

Kate Stevenson landscaped entrance to Eagles View Helen Gwin Commons,

Sexy DumpsterSeniorCleaners

Cooper Landing Historical Society and Museum

Thanks to Dave Westerman and Don Barber for putting metal roofing on Jack’s store and old CL Post Office! Thanks to Kristine Route for the great signage for the museum buildings, the old Cooper Landing school and Jack’s store and post office. Thanks to Kate Stevenson, Connie Loveall, and Kristine Route and her Youth Group for the colorful and very neat landscaping at the museum. Thanks to K-F for moving that 1928 CAT, used in building the road from Seward to Cooper Landing, out from in front of Katie Feichtinger’s burned wood mural of Kenai Lake to Skilak Lake. Thanks to Kate Stevenson for setting up the special time with Cooper Landing seasonal workers on June 28. Kate enjoyed visiting at local businesses as she took invitations and museum brochures to invite the workers to the get acquainted party.

The Cooper Landing Museum is open from 1 to 5 pm 7 days each week this summer. If you are interested in helping out, being a docent, let me know. Ron Gravenhorst, Kate Stevenson, Skye High, Sally Losco, Kristine Route and the Youth Group, and I are docents this summer with Cathy Leaders and Barb Atkinson subbing. You might catch Charlie Lean at the museum, too.

CLHS meets on Sunday July 9 at 2 pm in the old post office. The current board: President Mona Painter, VP and Treasurer Bob Baldwin, Secretary Barb Atkinson, Jan Mitchell, Ron Gravenhorst, Sally Losco, Chris Hyman, and Gyda Sears. We miss Ladonna Herbert, longtime board member and museum docent. She donated lovely pieces of Alaska native crafts to be displayed din the museum before leaving for her new home in Salem, Oregon.

Mona 907-202-6049

Calendar of Events

Tired of trying to keep track of Community activities, events and happenings? In addition to our printed monthly calendar check out our digital calendar to help keep track of what’s coming on and when. Any member submitted event activities will be placed on the digital calendar viewable through our website. Click

Cooper Landing Gem News

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All Chamber Members are invited to submit updates and information to the monthly newsletter. Contact us for more information.

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2023 Cooper Landing Chamber of Commerce & CVB

Please support our local businesses!

July 2023

Need the calendar on the go? Check out our digital version at: cooperlandingchamber.com/calendar.