"Matanuska? Mister, she's tough": New Deal agricultural settlement in Alaska, 1933-1940

Robert Redder Franklin

In 1935, during the height of the Great Depression, the Federal government selected 201 Midwestern farm families to start an agricultural community in Palmer, Alaska. The Matanuska Valley Colony offers an ideal case study with which to examine the mythology of the west and the frontier inherent in the "Back to the Land" movement, depression-era changes in socioeconomic identity, and federal investment in Alaska in terms of establishing permanent settlement and a consumerist market economy. The Matanuska Valley Colony occupies a transitional period in both Alaskan and American history during the New Deal era, a time where the role of the federal government in the economy was expanded and debated in ways that would physically and culturally change the face of America. The frontier in American history did not disappear--hundreds of thousands of acres of unsettled land speak otherwise. Rather the need for the frontier vanished as the forces of urbanization, industrialization, and an increasing standard of living created a consumerist lifestyle funded largely on credit, reducing the need for a physical frontier while keeping the idea alive and well for the colonists and as a means of political and cultural identification for Alaskans. Chapter one provides an overview of Russian and American attempts to solve supply and settlement inefficiencies, including the efforts of the federal government and Alaskan boosters to induce agricultural settlement in Alaska before 1935. Chapter two introduces the planners of the Matanuska Valley Colony, David Williams and Lawrence Westbrook, and links the colony to earlier attempts to create subsistence agricultural communities in Texas. Chapter three covers the first two years of the Matanuska Valley Colony, filled with rushed planning and numerous wastage of federal money, as well as discussing the nationwide press attention the colony received. Finally, chapter four follows the colony to the beginning of World War II, where during this time most colonists left the project or chose to abandon agriculture for work in the burgeoning cash economy resulting from increased federal defense spending.

"Matanuska? Mister, she's tough": New Deal agricultural settlement in Alaska, 1933-1940

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