Homesteading pioneers settle the Valley

MAT-SU — As Valley residents, most of us are well aware of the Colonists, those families from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin who came to Alaska on a prayer and a promise. We celebrate Colony Days, Colony Christmas, and even have a high school and middle school that bears the name. Over the years celebrations ensued at benchmark years for the Colonists and their children. But the history of settlement in Mat-Su goes back beyond those years of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Colonists were not the first to settle the Valley.

The Valley’s first people were indigenous groups who settled Mat-Su 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. Anthropologists count Athabascan Indians, who called themselves Dena’ina, as the Valley’s first settlers. But that is another entirely worthy story.

Gold and coal miners also inhabited the Valley prior to the 1930s Colony era. A large establishment at Knik provided supplies from Anchorage to explorations in the Willow Creek Mining District and the Chickaloon area coal mines. Then Congress created the Alaska Railroad in 1914 and development in the Valley shifted from Knik to the town sites of Matanuska and Wasilla.

But a significant influx of people arrived in the Mat-Su Valley with the purpose to homestead. In May of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act. Alaska was not included in this original legislation until President McKinley added the 49th state in 1898.

Initially the act allowed homesteaders 80 acres and provided several stipulations regarding who could apply and what they must do to maintain their claim. Homesteaders had to be a U.S. citizen (or in the process of becoming one), 21 years old (or head of a household or a former member of the military), and never bore arms against the United States. Furthermore, they must live on the homestead for five consecutive years and build a “habitable dwelling” (tents excluded). Homesteaders also were required to cultivate 1/8 of their property. Over time amendments added or detracted acreage and changed requirements for these claims until 1976, when homesteading ended in the U.S. Except Alaska where homesteading was extended until 1986.

Hundreds of settlers arrived in the Valley to homestead, decades prior to the Colonists. To paint the contrast, homesteaders began to arrive shortly after the Homestead Act included Alaska in 1898. A wave of homesteaders arrived in 1914. Colonists came to the Valley in 1935.

Where Colonists received help from the government with transportation, food and lodging on the journey from the Midwest to Palmer. But earlier pioneers of made their way north under the Homestead Act traveled on their own dime without the benefit of special transports, meals, or lodging.

While Depression-era Colonists were met with publicity and fanfare at every stop along the way, earlier Homesteaders arrived without hoopla or celebration.

Although the Colonists dealt with special rules and regulations (and mishaps or oversights on the part of the government program), they also received assistance from civilian workers who helped provide an infrastructure for their settlement; clearing sites and erecting wall tents. Early homesteaders staked their claims amidst an uncleared land, rife with mosquitoes, and established their homes and farms with little if any outside assistance and mostly with simple tools.

Throughout the years we celebrate the Colony Project, host parades, and commemorate landmarks, but the earlier pioneers, who survived on their own will power and might as homesteaders, have gone mostly unheralded.

Several Valley families will soon celebrate 100 years as homesteading residents of the Mat-Su. Remnants of many of these homesteads exist even today. A unique few families still occupy at least a portion of their original home sites. And so, here this story begins. Over the course of the next few weeks, the Frontiersman will feature families who homesteaded here. We begin with Adam Werner who staked his claim in 1914, married Fanny Eaton, and together they raised a family of three girls just north of Palmer-Fishhook.

If you know of other homesteading families, or would like to see your own family represented in these stories, contact the Frontiersman at news@frontiersman.com, call 352-2250, or call Jenny Weaver at 982-5446.