Homer Spit
Nature's gift from Alaska's icy past

Everyone -- visitors and residents, alike -- goes to the Spit. An impossible-to-ignore beckoning finger, it snags the attention of campers, walkers, joggers, skaters, boaters, fishers, surfers, beachcombers, horseback riders, shoppers and eaters. And the curious.

In the not too distant past, two theories offered explanations for the Spit's origin. According to "A History of Kachemak Bay - the Country, the Communities," by Homer author Janet Klein, one theory held that the Spit was the offspring of Kachemak Bay and Cook Inlet's complex currents. The second theory says the Spit is a terminal moraine composed of sand, gravel, coal and other debris left by a glacier retreating into the Kenai Mountains.

Giving his vote to the second theory is Ed Berg, geology instructor at the Kachemak Bay and Kenai River campuses of the Kenai Peninsula College-University of Alaska Anchorage. Based on years of study, Berg describes the Spit as the exposed part of an underwater moraine for a tidewater glacier. A well drilled near the end of the Spit helped pinpoint its origin.

"When you look at the well logs, you see about 300 feet of sand and gravel, which is what you would expect from a moraine," said Berg, who, along with his colleague, Dick Reger, a retired state geologist from Soldotna, date the Spit at approximately 16,500 years old.

The last major glaciation to leave its mark on the Kenai Peninsula consisted of four periods: Moosehorn, Killey, Skilak and Elmendorf. It is the third, Skilak, that created the Spit, according to Reger. It also shaped Archimandritof Shoals, a large submarine fan on the seaward side of the moraine. Local mariners know this area by the green buoy -- known locally as "the green can" -- that marks the shoals a mile west of the Spit.

During the 1964 earthquake, the Homer Spit reportedly dropped seven feet. On the next high tide, water gushed through the doors and windows of the Salty Dawg. Many Spit businesses had to be elevated or moved to higher ground.

"Five feet of that was due to compaction, just like at the beach when you fill a big tin can with sand and shake it down. It compacts," Berg said. The additional two-foot drop was due to tectonic subsidence.

Would the Spit disappear without human efforts, such as the riprap, large rocks, placed on its seaward side?

"It could go away," Berg said. "But it would take time."