The Matanuska Colony Barns
The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project
One of the first books I published, The Matanuska Colony Barns: The Enduring Legacy of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener (Northern Light Media, 2013), is still the only book highlighting the iconic barns of an almost-forgotten government social experiment here in Alaska. In 1935 the U.S. Government transported 200 families from the Great Depression-stricken midwest to Alaska, where they were given the chance to begin new lives as part of the Matanuska Colony Project. As part of each family’s farmstead, a magnificent barn was raised, and today these Colony barns are an iconic reminder of what has been called the last great pioneering adventure in America.
I detailed the history of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for America in another book, “A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener (Northern Light Media, 2016), in which I explained how a few visionary men convinced the planners in Washington, D.C. to extend their community-building efforts north to Alaska, telling the complex story of this important chapter in American history. Nearly one hundred new communities were designed and developed by Roosevelt’s planners, but the largest, most expensive, and most audacious of them all was to build a government-sponsored farming community in Alaska.
“The valley looks great. It looks fine, fine. You got a mighty nice place here.” ~American humorist and commentator Will Rogers, Palmer, Alaska, August, 1935
When I began the Colony barns book in 2012 I started a website for the book, and wrote the following:
It’s been my good fortune to live in the Matanuska Valley off and on for close to 40 years, and the Matanuska Colony barns have always been a part of my life in Alaska. Driving the roads around Palmer and Wasilla one sees the old structures often, glimpsed down a tree-lined dirt lane or silhouetted against a mountain backdrop, and they rarely fail to bring a smile. Like trusted and comforting old friends, the barns are always there.
I’ve been living with, admiring, and casually photographing these picturesque barns for four decades, and in that time I’ve asked many questions about them, which have mostly gone unanswered. This blog – or more accurately, the forthcoming book it’s based on – is my attempt to find answers to some of the questions.
The website for the barns book, along with the websites for several other books on the Colony and other topics, are still online, but they have been overrun with advertising, and as I cannot afford to pay to have the ads removed on them all, I’m going to begin transitioning the content to this SubStack platform, which is far and away a better resource for highlighting all of my books. Watch for more about that soon.
The Colony barns and Matanuska Colony Project books, along with my 2013 book on the Valley, are all still available from Northern Light Media, from Amazon, or from any bookstore, online or off. As I develop the new online presentations for the books I’ll be including ordering information for each, but for now they can be purchased via the links below, which go to the individual information pages for each book at my website, Northern Light Media.
“There are many persons who are happier in a simple existence, living largely through their own efforts in a self-sufficient way… We had it once in America, and there are those who feel we lost something valuable in our departure from it…” -Rexford G. Tugwell, agricultural economist for Roosevelt’s New Deal