The Ninilchik Rodeo and beach horse races took place at the Ninilchik Fairgrounds in the first weekend of July. Homer’s Emilie Springer talked with Rodeo Coordinator Shirley Cox and some youth assistants about what the history of the event and what the 2025 event included.

Crews battled a roughly 10-acre fire north of Kasilof over the weekend. The Alaska Division of Forestry first reported the so-called Bruces Fire on the Fourth of July around 4 p.m.; and the Dena’ina people have lived on the Kenai Peninsula for thousands of years. But today, the group’s Indigenous language isn’t spoken as widely as it once was.