just purchased property on fox creek,ne of homer (Anchorage: live, vehicle)

[billygoat]

im looking for first hand info on the area, ive researched what i could on the internet and learned alot. but would love some first hand knowledge

[snowleopard]

and I asked, "What's up with that? No one ever moves out of Homer."

He said, "We had property there that was covered in big spruce, and the spruce trees all were beetle-killed, so we didn't have privacy any more. Also, there was a vote to build a new dock for a chipping mill that went in there to dispose of all the dead spruce."

So I asked, "They're turning it into a mill town?????" He said yes, and that's why they left.

Probably not what you wanted to hear. Used to be one of the prettiest places I've ever seen, and I hope it's still that way.

[Rance]

The chip dock is gone. It's no longer a mill town. Fox Creek area is awesome. Wish I had some property up there myself.

[rotorhead]

I used to fly over there pretty regularly, it was one way we could sneak into Homer from Anchorage when the cloud deck wouldn't let us go straight over the Caribou hills. I assume you're talking about the Fox River Valley, which leads into Kachemak bay...it's a beautiful area. But...

I've never been there by ground, and the access looks pretty difficult. There's a private airstrip a couple miles upriver from the habitat area, but as far as I know theres no roads past the Russian Old Believers village (Kachemak? Silo?) and even some of the properties around there are only accessible over the mud flats at low tide. There might be a hiking trail thats usable by ATVs or snowmachine in the winter, but not a regular width FWD vehicle.

It's been a couple of years since I've been there and I never really stopped to look around, so maybe things have changed...who knows?

[karibear]

Originally Posted by Rance

The chip dock is gone. It's no longer a mill town. Fox Creek area is awesome. Wish I had some property up there myself.

Last time I heard anything about the area was 8 or 9 years ago, and that was that Happy Valley was a giant mud pit from the log trucks. There was someone near there who used to post on the old ACA ng, but I haven't seen anything from her on this forum. She lived on a ranch near some of the Old Believers.

[Rance]

My Mom had a bed and breakfast in Ninilchik for 6 or 7 years. She housed loggers from fall through spring. They rid the area of beetle kill which would have roasted the town had it ever caught fire. She also worked the chip dock testing wood chip samples for water content. Seems the beetle kill spruce was highly sought after because it needed little or no bleaching when it was processed into paper. The entire ordeal created many jobs not to mention got rid of forest fire fuel. I don't think I ever did come across any locals that complained about the logging or the trucks. The logging outfits have now been replaced by an occasional drilling rig. I'm sure there were times the log trucks made a mess of the road...but for the most part they shut down come spring so as not to sink their heavy equipment in bogs or destroy the roads.