Jakolof Bay, Kachemak Bay

Jakolof Bay, Kachemak Bay

by | Jan 13, 2023

Jakolof Bay is on the Kenai Peninsula, at the southern end of Kasitsna Bay, about 13 miles (21 km) south of Homer and 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east-northeast of Seldovia, Alaska. The name was first reported in 1915 by the U.S. Geological Survey. The local soil type is unique to the area and was named after the bay. Jakolof soils are well-drained and consist of very deep volcanic ash over alluvial deposits that support native vegetation of Sitka spruce with an understory of salmonberry, fern, and moss. Grasses, fireweed, lupine, and other forbs grow in small scattered meadows that commonly occur on Jakolof soils.

A road was constructed in the early 20th century on the south shore of Kachemak Bay linking Seldovia to Jakolof Bay and then to a chrome mine on Red Mountain. The chromite ore was trucked to Jakolof Bay and loaded onto ships for export. A unique deepwater loading facility with an ore chute was constructed by blasting a tunnel through a bedrock headland to a loading wharf between Jakolof Bay and Kasitsna Bay.

The South Central Timber Company logged Jakolof Bay, and Rocky and Windy Bay in the 1960s and 70s, which played a significant role in the local economy. South Central Timber upgraded the road between Seldovia and Jakolof Bay and built the now abandoned road over the Kenai Mountains to Windy Bay and the Gulf of Alaska. Remains of the log transfer facility can still be seen today as well as a rough gravel airstrip on the beach which is underwater during very high tides. Today the bay supports an oyster farm, a marine research laboratory, and has a public dock. Read more here and here. Explore more of Jakolof Bay here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

Please report any errors here

error: Content is protected !!