ALIVE AT 75

Editor’s note: This year marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Depression Era colonists to the Valley. This is the first in a summer-long series recognizing the anniversary, published each Friday.

PALMER — If you count being in her mother’s womb, Gerry Keeling is an original Matanuska Colonist.

Saima Kindren was pregnant with Gerry when Kindren arrived in the Valley in May 1935 with husband Oscar and 11-year-old daughter Jeanie. The Kindrens were one of 204 families in search of a better life during the Great Depression. Part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Matanuska Colony was one of 100 to offer new lives to those hit hardest by the Depression.

“I was the first baby born in the beautiful little Colony Hospital,” said Keeling, who is an active member of the Palmer Historical Society and manages the Colony House Museum. “The hospital wasn’t even in the original planning, but these families traveling to Alaska in such tight quarters on the train and their children were all of the sudden dealing with a very serious outbreak of the measles.”

Eight families were quarantined in Seattle with the disease, she said, while the new colonists had a serious health challenge arrive with them. In the end, three young boys all under the age of 4 — and coincidentally all named Donald — died.

“After they died, parents telegraphed Eleanor Roosevelt and said, ‘Our children are dying, we need your help,’” Keeling said. “It was because of that that our beautiful little hospital was constructed.”

That was 75 years ago. In the decades since, the little Matanuska Valley Colony has grown and thrived, a testament to the New Deal and the spirit of the 100 communities created out of the Great Depression, Keeling said. And they started with nearly nothing.

Colonists were allowed to take 2,000 pounds of possessions and themselves. What was waiting for them when disembarking the train in Palmer was “not a whole lot,” she said.

“There was a railroad track that went up to Chickaloon to haul coal, but that was about it,” she said. “These were people who had all been hit by the Depression, and the people who came here were all from the upper areas of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The government had specified that people for this community had to be from there because of — you got it — climate.”

Those first arrivals got off the train and lived in tents until their 40 acres of land was assigned. Where their farmland would be was also an unknown to those first families, Keeling said.

“It was so varied an experience for the different families,” she said. “Some drew land close to the community’s center, which was being constructed. Some families drew 40-acre plots that had been homesteaded and others were maybe 10 miles out of town — and there may have been a road or may not.”

Colony House Museum

Today, the legacy of those first 204 families is preserved at the Colony House Museum, a small home at 316 E. Elmwood Ave. in Palmer. The house was moved to its current location in 1995, but before then was built in 1935 by colonists Oscar and Irene Beylund.

“It was one of the first houses built in that first two years as homes for the first colonists who came up,” Keeling said.

Now restored, it has been lovingly furnished by the area’s colony families, and Keeling knows the history of just about everything in the house.

“Right here in this room, that piano was brought up by colonists Neil and Margaret Miller,” she said. “They had three children and they packed all the family clothing inside that piano. It’s the oldest piece in the house, built in Boston in 1895.”

Then there’s the unassuming coffee table that was made from scraps left over when Palmer’s first mayor built his home.

“The table in front of the couch belonged to Palmer’s first mayor, Carl Meier,” Keeling said. “He was the first mayor when Palmer voted to become a first-class city in 1951.”

Much progress

The Palmer area has continued to grow and thrive from its colony roots, much like the rest of the nation, Keeling said.

A graduate of the Palmer Territorial School class of 1953 — there were 26 in her class — Keeling recalls some of the nuances that made Palmer unique. It wasn’t until she was in eighth grade that she first talked on a telephone.

“I remember I was scared to death,” she said of the experience. “You would’ve thought I was sitting in an electric chair, it was just so weird.”

Keeling was a cheerleader for the Valley’s first high school football game played in 1951 on a field where the Alaska Pioneer and Veterans Home is today. There may not have been much to do during the week, but when the weekend came it was time for basketball, she said.

“Basketball was the sport,” Keeling said. “I remember when Palmer would play Anchorage. Anchorage only had one school, the orange and black Eagles, and when they would come here to play the Valley kids, the train would come with probably about four passenger cars plumb full.”

She likens the atmosphere at those games to that depicted in a popular movie of the 1980s.

“We had some wonderful ‘Hoosier’-type basketball,” she said. “Usually, they were victorious, but not always. (If Palmer would win) that was good, the best. It happened on occasion and still brings a smile.”

Unlike today’s 24/7 news cycle with television and the Internet, much of the world news was disseminated through the local church bulletin board, Keeling said. A reverend would listen to the news on his short-wave radio, then type up a page of news and post it.

“He was the source of news in the world and radios were certainly popular,” she said.

Keeping the spirit

Today, the Valley continues to grow and progress, but Keeling is concerned that the area’s local roots may be severed to make way for that growth.

“We have tried very sincerely to make it so that when people come into (the museum) they are kind of surprised by the spiritual sense that exists here when they see how maybe their grandparents or parents lived,” she said. “We have had visitors come in with some very touching stories.”

She also said seeing how the colonists lived is a way to make history come alive, that it’s not all bleak and colorless like the black-and-white photographs of the era.

“I have great concern for some of the attitudes expressed — even in our own local Frontiersman — as to whether or not it’s important to save the history. … this isn’t just the (Matanuska) Colony story, it’s the spirit of the nation. It’s the people of the Depression and the war years. It’s that nurturing acorn that kind of grew into the nation, and that is what I would like to see protected and valued for the future.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.