20 years ago

Jay-Brant General Contractors won the bid to build the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center, the new home of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve on the Homer Bypass. Jay-Brant won the contract with a bid just under $12 million..

Partner Chuck Jay said the contract was the biggest project they’d ever had.

“We’re tickled,” Jay said. “We just don’t get opportunities like this every day.”

— From the issue of Dec. 27, 2001

30 years ago

The Pratt Museum’s “Darkened Waters” exhibit about the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill opened at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. Pratt Museum Director Betsy Pitzman tagged along with staff of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and museum officials at a preview. Pitzman said she detected some uneasiness during the preview.

“I don’t think they liked it,” Pitzman said. “They were very quiet.”

A review by Hank Burchard in the Washington Post ruffled some feathers when he wrote, “Oil is easy to find in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Sink a spade into the ground … and the earth bleeds oil.” Pitzman got letters from the Alaska Division of Tourism and others about the article. She was asked to write a letter to the Post, and did. Pitzman said the Post article “fairly describes the exhibit.” She wrote that Burchard engaged in literary license and not fact.

— From the issue of Dec. 25, 1991

50 years ago

The Dec. 23, 1971, issue is missing from the Homer News archives.