1910 Willow Creek Mining District

1910 Map of Willow Creek Mining District

by D.H. Sleem, M.D.

“A long time friend, Bill Pippel, greeted me one evening in downtown Palmer, “Would you or your history geek buddies want an old map?”  Well, he had my attention…

Bill had found one of the very first maps of our area, one we had never seen before.  The map came with a note, enabling us to trace its ownership and hear some great stories.

This map is a local treasure – a quite detailed insight into what was happening here a century ago – and we want to share it.”

Ralph Hulbert

The map was scanned and printed it full size (16.5 x 22 inches) on heavy stock, trying to maintain the image as found and adding only a tiny credit line in the margin.  A detailed map description is included on the reverse side.

Click here for a low-resolution picture of the map (the original scan sent to the printer was about 1000 times this size).

This link opens the map description and great information about the map.

Reprints are available for $5 at the Colony House Museum, where the original map is displayed.

1927 Fisheries Report

J.E. Wilson spent the summer of 1927 on seven salmon streams from Nancy Lake to Wasilla Cr. and on the south side of Knik Arm. He worked the streams from their headwaters to the inlet, assessing salmon habitat and removing obstacles. He describes the natural conditions, hardships, and the people he met. We recognize many names, but more are forgotten and even lakes and natural features have been renamed. This is a must read for local historians and fishermen.

We thank Matt LaCroix for sharing this find and report description: The report is a daily log that details work “to ascertain the extent and condition of the natural spawning grounds of the salmon entering this area, with a view of rendering aid to the production end of the industry by reclamation and maintenance of these grounds if found to be necessary.” 

Click on this link Wilson, J. E., 1927, Bureau of Fisheries, Reclamation and Maintenance, The Susitna Valley, Alaska  

1935 Matanuska Colony

The ‘New Deal’ Comes to Palmer

The New Deal was a set of federal programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after taking office in 1933, in response to the calamity of the Great Depression.

It had four major goals and achievements:

•Economic Recovery: The New Deal stabilized the banks and cleaned up the financial mess left over from the Stock Market crash of 1929.  It stabilized prices for industry and agriculture, and it aided bankrupt state and local governments.  And it injected a huge amount of federal spending to bolster aggregate incomes and demand.

•Job Creation: One in four Americans was out of work by 1933.  The New Deal created a number of special agencies that provided jobs for millions of workers and wages that provided for desperate families. It also recognized the rights of workers to organize in unions.

•Investment in Public Works:  The New Deal built hundreds of thousands of highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, theaters, libraries, city halls, homes, post offices, airports, and parks across America—most of which are still in use today.

•Civic Uplift:  The New Deal touched every state, city, and town, improving the lives of ordinary people and reshaping the public sphere.  New Dealers and the men and women who worked on New Deal programs believed they were not only serving their families and communities but building the foundation for a great and caring society.

In less than a decade, the New Deal changed the face of America and laid the foundation for success in World War II and the prosperity of the postwar era – the greatest and fairest epoch in American history.

The New Deal, 1933-1943, inspired a civic, cultural, and economic renaissance.

Click here to see the Official Photo Album ~ Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. – Matanuska Colonization Project.

Imagine how our little town exploded in population – colonists, support personnel, and transient workers!

Matanuska Colony “Mug Book” – A photo album of Colonists, with names, places and family information.  Assembled and donated by Juster Hill -Writers, Directors and Producers of Alaska Far Away and Where the Matanuska River Flows. We invite you to stop by the Colony House Museum to look at the Mug Book along with corrections and family photos we have added to the blank pages. Our goal is to have a photo for each family. If your family page is blank and you have a photo please let us know. 

Building a Town:  – An introductory history of the transient workers of the Matanuska Valley Colony of 1935.

Names of Transient Workers  – The Transient Worker list is a work in progress – if you know names that should be added please let us know.

There are other New Deal Colonies around the United States –

The total construction cost for all New Deal towns was $108,095,328.00. The average cost per unit was $9,961.00
(Source: “Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program”, Paul K. Conkin)

This and more information can be found at National New Deal Preservation Association – learn more!

1939 Aerial Photos

Take a tour with us as we fly over the central Matanuska Valley in a small airplane on a fine bright fall day in 1939. Luckily, there’s a professional photographer from Pacific Aerial Surveys on board with his wide format camera, shooting at will out the open door at select scenes from elevations of a few hundred feet.

Unfortunately, all but 48 of the photographic negatives were lost in a Seattle flood. Fortunately, Aero-Metric Inc. acquired the negatives, and Steve Sparks scanned them and provided digital images for us to use for research, which were presented at our October ’07 annual meeting.

When projected on a screen, the high resolution of these photos let us zoom in to great detail. We could identify the farms, homesteads, cabins, crops, cars, and sometimes the signs on buildings. Those who were here in 1939 added many details, but we hadn’t seen these photos before, and time was limited. We had more questions than answers and resolved to look more closely and share our findings. This page should help us do that.

The photos posted here are 10-20% of the original file size due to space and copyright, but still good for research and identification. .

The photos are organized in a flight line, starting from west of Wasilla, then flying northeast to the Matanuska River, thence south to Palmer and over the Springer System, around the Butte, west over the town of Matanuska, Ag. Experiment Farm, Fairview area, then towards Anchorage. The photographer’s notes were found with the negatives, and reference the negative number.  The photo locations have been noted on five sections of the 1937 colony map (also available at Colony House Museum): West (photos 1-5, 47), Middle (photos 6-7 and 41-46),North (photos 8-19), Southeast (photos 20-32), and South (photos 33-40).

Here are the files with the aerial photos:

We sincerely thank Aero-Metric for letting us use these photos for research purposes.