Pratt Museum, Natural history museum in Homer, Alaska.

The Pratt Museum is a natural history museum in Homer that focuses on the Kachemak Bay region, displaying exhibits about marine life, terrestrial ecosystems, and the human communities that have inhabited this area. The collections include both scientific educational materials and artifacts that document the history and environment of the region.

The Homer Society of Natural History incorporated in 1965, and the museum itself opened in 1968 in a building designed by Crittenden, Cassetta, Wirum & Jacobs of Anchorage. Local artist Sam Pratt's collection led to the society's founding; he and his wife Vega donated the land, and Pratt served as first volunteer curator. Hazel Heath, society treasurer from 1968 to 1983 and Homer's mayor from 1968 to 1976, is credited with founding the museum.

The main gallery exhibit, Kachemak Bay: An Exploration of People & Place, covers Native Alaskan traditions, the homesteaders of the 1930s and 1940s, and today's fisheries that sustain Homer, Kachemak City, Seldovia, Halibut Cove and Anchor Point. Outside, a small Homestead Garden grows annuals and perennials that mattered to farmers and homesteaders on the Kenai Peninsula.

The museum sits on a 9.8-acre property in Homer. Its board began designing a new, single-level building in 2010 to add exhibit and storage space and remove the need for staircases and elevators. The current building, opened in 1968, still houses the galleries.

The museum offers live camera feeds from a nearby island where you can watch seabirds like puffins and cormorants in their natural habitat. Beyond these remote observations, aquariums hold local marine creatures that you can examine up close.