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. Situated in the Matanuska Valley, about 45 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the colony was settled by 203 families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The colony project cost about $5,000,000 and, after five years, over half of the original colonists had left the valley. By 1965, only 20 of the first families were still farming the valley.

The Matanuska Colony was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal plan to help move the United States out of the Great Depression. It was one of many rural rehabilitation colonies to be established by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Others included Cherry Lake Farms in Florida, Dyess Colony in Arkansas, and the Pine Mountain Valley Rural Community in Georgia.

In 1935, Americans in rural areas of northern states were among the worst sufferers of the Great Depression. 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. Each family was to receive a 40-acre (16 ha) plot to turn into farmland. From conception to realization, the project progressed rapidly. A survey was made of the Matanuska Valley in June 1934 to ascertain its agricultural viability. Some of the information that would have proven to be useful in planning the colony was not even available until after colonization had begun. Nonetheless, the following January, FERA and Department of the Interior agreed to undertake the project. 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. According to historian Orlando W. Miller, a total of 241,332 acres were initially set aside for the colony, with an additional 7,780 acres added later on to provide more continuity between the farms. After all, it was supposed to be a colony with startup assistance from the government. 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.

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