Matanuska Valley Colony
In 1935, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration created an experimental farming community known as the Matanuska Valley Colony as part of the New Deal resettlement plan.
[1] Situated in the Matanuska Valley, about 45 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the colony was settled by 203 families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
[3] The Matanuska Colony was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal plan to help move the United States out of the Great Depression.
Others included Cherry Lake Farms in Florida, Dyess Colony in Arkansas, and the Pine Mountain Valley Rural Community in Georgia.
In order to alleviate some of the pressures upon these areas, the FERA commissioned applicants from the northern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to colonize a tract of land in the Territory of Alaska.
The administration chose these three northern states because of their climate and belief that representatives would be well suited to survive harsh elements of subarctic winters.
The hope was that the colony candidates would be good farmers with the necessary skills and hardiness required for self-sufficiency in the harsh Alaskan environment.
A few weeks later, 80,000 acres of land was set aside for the project and, by April, the first construction workers and colonists left for the valley.
In effect, they wanted to keep the farms together in a single area as opposed to being spread out across the vast region reserved by President Roosevelt's Executive Order 6957 of 4 February 1935.
The federal government built houses and barns and paid for the transportation of the families and some of their goods to Alaska.
[12] There was a high failure rate due to the short growing seasons, steep freight prices, and distant markets.
Polio, measles, chicken pox, and pneumonia quickly ran through the community, especially affecting the children who made up half of the population.
Children played in the streets late into the night, dances were held every weekend in the community hall, and church was attended every Sunday.
Additional successful crops yielding thoroughly ripened grain included wheat, barley, oats, and winter rye.
[16] The cooperative also purchased the supplies needed by the colony residents, such as feeds, seeds, fertilizer, farm machinery and general merchandise.
For a short period of time in the early 1960s, the military enforced a contract that required no more than 48-hours pass between pasteurization and delivery.
This eliminated the truck-based shipment of milk from Seattle to Fairbanks, improving the profitability of the Matanuska and Tanana River valley dairies.
In July 1941 the bureau established a network of 15 stations in collaboration with the Soil Conservation Service and the General Land Office, to record temperature and precipitation.
In 1956 the Weather Bureau meteorologist Robert H. Dale published a technical paper based on 34 years of records from the Matanuska Agricultural Experiment Station (No.
14), with some additional records of 11 years from 5 stations (including one at Wasilla and one at Eluktna – the Anchorage Power Plant, established May 1941).
The findings: Currently, the town of Palmer, Alaska, which descended from the Matanuska Valley colonists, is home to many of the children of the settlers.
Some of the original structures from the colony, including a church and barn, have been moved to the Alaska State Fairgrounds.
It did not significantly increase the population of the area, but it did develop the Matanuska Valley as the primary agriculturally productive region within Alaska.
[12] During the latter part of the twentieth century, the Matanuska Valley saw continued success with dairies and farming for local consumption.
In addition, as the population of Anchorage grew to make it the largest city in Alaska, residents began to look towards the Matanuska Valley to build homes.
