Day Harbor | |
---|---|
Location | Kenai Peninsula, Alaska |
Coordinates | 59°59′N149°09′W / 59.99°N 149.15°W Coordinates: 59°59′N149°09′W / 59.99°N 149.15°W |
Primary inflows | Ellsworth River, Bootleg River, Selenite River, Talus Creek |
Basin countries | United States |
Max. length | 13.5 mi (21.7 km) |
Max. width | 5 mi (8.0 km) |
Average depth | 500 ft (150 m) [1] |
Max. depth | 666 ft (203 m) |
Islands | 1 |
Sections/sub-basins | Driftwood Bay, Killer Bay, Safety Cove, Talus Bay, Anchor Cove, Bowen Anchorage |
Day Harbor is a bay on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, United States. It received its name in 1787 from Captain Portlock, [2] due to the fact that travel to the head of the bay from Seward typically takes 12 hours. The bay is 25 miles from Seward, and is accessible only by boat. [3] It is a gently curving J-shaped bay separated on the west from nearby Resurrection Bay by the Resurrection Peninsula. Recreational boaters often anchor at one of the two State Marine Parks due to the often choppy seas and unstable weather of outer Day Harbor. [4] Lesser used anchorages on the eastern shore include Anchor Cove and Bowen Anchorage. Popular activities in the bay include hiking to Ellsworth Lake at the head of the bay where the retreating Ellsworth Glacier calves.
The majority of the land surrounding Day Harbor is private, with over 400 different properties. [5]
The bay is home to two Alaska State Parks. Driftwood Bay State Marine Park is 1,480 acres (600 ha) of undeveloped wilderness. The primary activity in the park is boating for either fishing or sightseeing purposes, it is mostly a day-use park due to the lack of any facilities on shore. [6] Safety Cove State Marine Park is 960 acres (390 ha), including waters in the bay. It is also undeveloped but offers a good spot for beach camping, a small freshwater lake, and access to the high country of the Resurrection Peninsula. [7]
Kenai Peninsula Borough is a borough of the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2020 census, the population was 58,799, up from 55,400 in 2010. The borough seat is Soldotna, the largest city is Kenai, and the most populated community is the census-designated place of Kalifornsky.
Lowell Point is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, United States, just outside Seward. At the 2010 census the population was 80, down from 92 in 2000.
Seward is an incorporated home rule city in Alaska, United States. Located on Resurrection Bay, a fjord of the Gulf of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula, Seward is situated on Alaska's southern coast, approximately 120 miles (190 km) by road from Alaska's largest city, Anchorage.
The Kenai Peninsula is a large peninsula jutting from the coast of Southcentral Alaska. The name Kenai is derived from the word "Kenaitze" or "Kenaitze Indian Tribe", the name of the Native Athabascan Alaskan tribe, the Kahtnuht’ana Dena’ina, who historically inhabited the area. They called the Kenai Peninsula Yaghanen.
Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 km) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. On its southern end, it merges with Shelikof Strait, Stevenson Entrance, Kennedy Entrance and Chugach Passage.
Kenai Fjords National Park is an American national park that maintains the Harding Icefield, its outflowing glaciers, and coastal fjords and islands. The park covers an area of 669,984 acres on the Kenai Peninsula in south-central Alaska, west of the town of Seward.
Turnagain Arm is a waterway into the northwestern part of the Gulf of Alaska. It is one of two narrow branches at the north end of Cook Inlet, the other being Knik Arm. Turnagain is subject to climate extremes and large tide ranges.
The Sterling Highway is a 138-mile-long (222 km) state highway in the south-central region of the U.S. state of Alaska, leading from the Seward Highway at Tern Lake Junction, 90 miles (140 km) south of Anchorage, to Homer.
The Seward Highway is a highway in the U.S. state of Alaska that extends 125 miles (201 km) from Seward to Anchorage. It was completed in 1951 and runs through the scenic Kenai Peninsula, Chugach National Forest, Turnagain Arm, and Kenai Mountains. The Seward Highway is numbered Alaska Route 9 (AK-9) for the first 37 miles (60 km) from Seward to the Sterling Highway and AK-1 for the remaining distance to Anchorage. At the junction with the Sterling Highway, AK-1 turns west towards Sterling and Homer. About eight miles (13 km) of the Seward Highway leading into Anchorage is built to freeway standards. In Anchorage, the Seward Highway terminates at an intersection with 5th Avenue, which AK-1 is routed to, and which then leads to the Glenn Highway freeway.
Sucia Island is located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, San Juan County, Washington, United States. It is the largest of an archipelago of ten islands including Sucia Island, Little Sucia, Ewing, Justice, Herndon, the Cluster Islands islets, and several smaller, unnamed islands. The group of islands is about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) in length and just short of a half mile wide. Sucia island is roughly the shape of a hand. The total land area of all islands is 2.74 km². The main island of Sucia Island by itself is 2.259 km². There was a permanent population of four persons as of the 2000 census, all on Sucia Island. Sucia Island State Park is a Washington State Marine Park.
Resurrection Bay, also known as Blying Sound, and Harding Gateway in its outer reaches, is a fjord on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, United States. Its main settlement is Seward, located at the head of the bay. The bay received its name from Alexandr Baranov, who was forced to retreat into the bay during a bad storm in the Gulf of Alaska. When the storm settled it was Easter Sunday, so the bay and nearby Resurrection River were named in honor of it. Harding Gateway refers to the passage between Rugged and Cheval Islands.
Founded in 1964, Kenai Peninsula College (KPC), is a unit of the University of Alaska Anchorage with four locations on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula and Anchorage.
Seldovia Airport is a public-use gravel airstrip serving Seldovia, Alaska, about 15 miles (27 km) south-southwest from the fishing town of Homer at the Kenai Peninsula's "end of the road." The two towns are separated by Kachemak Bay, a blue-water arm of the North Pacific Ocean's Gulf of Alaska. Known to pilots as "Seldovia", this public airport is located less than a half-mile (2 km) northeast of the small boat harbor serving Seldovia in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, United States. This airport is publicly owned by the State of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) - Central Region. A two-lane gravel street named Airport Avenue leads about a half-mile (1 km) from the airport to the center of Seldovia at the Small Boat Harbor, which is surrounded by several cafes, businesses, and small hotels.
Alaska occupies the northwestern portion of the North American continent and is bordered only by Canada on the east. It is one of two U.S. states not bordered by another state; Hawaii is the other. Alaska has more ocean coastline than all of the other U.S. states combined. About 500 miles (800 km) of Canadian territory separate Alaska from Washington state. Alaska is thus an exclave of the United States that is part of the continental U.S. and the U.S. West Coast, but is not part of the contiguous U.S. Alaska is also the only state, other than Hawaii, whose capital city is accessible only via ship or air, because no roads connect Juneau to the rest of the continent.
Caines Head State Recreation Area is a 6,571-acre (26.59 km2) recreational area encompassing the Caines Head cape in Resurrection Bay, Alaska. The area is located in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, 7 miles (11 km) south of the city of Seward. A popular tourist destination, Caines Head features spruce and hemlock forests as well as a variety of terrestrial and marine wildlife. It also features the remains of Fort McGilvray, a World War II-era fortification erected in 1941–1942 to defend against the potential invasion of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Humpy Cove is an inlet of Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula of the U.S. state of Alaska. Located 11 miles from Seward, it has the shape of a whale's tail, and consists of two smaller bays. The cove is often used as an anchorage for recreational boaters. It received its name from the plentiful returns of pink salmon that spawn in Humpy Creek, the inflow of the southern bay. The cove is a popular tourist destination as well, due to Orca Island Cabins and kayak tours offered by Miller's Landing. Humpy Cove has runs of rockfish, halibut, coho salmon, chinook salmon, and chum salmon as well as pinks, and a popular fishing spot is near the Iron Door, the remains of a searchlight and bunker from World War II. The cove contains the only road on the Resurrection Peninsula, a stretch of pavement leading to the aforementioned searchlight.
Resurrection Peninsula is a peninsula on the larger Kenai Peninsula of the U.S. state of Alaska, which lies roughly 8 miles southeast of Seward. It contains very rugged geography, with very little flat land existing between sheer peaks and the deep inlets of Resurrection Bay to the west, and Day Harbor to the east. Due to the geographical nature of the peninsula, it is uninhabited, although numerous cabins, state parks, and general private in holdings exist. All land here is accessible by boat only. There is no concrete measurement of the exact of the landmass, however, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has a management area which encompasses the landmass as well as lands that are not usually considered part of a peninsula. The land which better fits the definition is roughly 10 miles long, running from near Thumb Cove and Talus Bay to Cape Resurrection at its southern extremity. Slightly less than half of the land on the Resurrection Peninsula is part of the Chugach National Forest's southern terminus.
Rugged Island is a barrier island at the mouth of Resurrection Bay near Seward in the U.S. state of Alaska. The island is 2.4 miles long, 1.7 miles wide, and is primarily mountainous, consisting of mostly steep hills, peaks and vertical cliffs. The island's curved shape wraps three quarters of the way around Rugged Island's only anchorage, a central inlet known as Mary's Bay. Rugged Island is a popular destination for kayaking, sailing, camping, and guided hikes to the abandoned fort on its shores in the summer.