Kellogg in Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame

ANCHORAGE — Longtime Mat-Su Valley farmer, philanthropist and educator Louise Kellogg is one of 16 new members who will be inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame at 6 p.m., March 1 at the Anchorage Loussac Library Wilda Marston Theatre.

She was born Venie “Louise” Kellogg Oct. 13, 1903, in Chicago, the second of four children born to LeRoy DeWolf Kellogg and Ellen Neel Kellogg.

Her father was president of the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Co. and also had a farm where they would spend summers away from the city, and that’s where her interest in farming took root.

She enrolled at Vassar College at the age of 18 and graduated in 1925 with a degree in English.

Kellogg moved with her family to Pasadena, Calif., after college, and there she earned her pilot’s license, flying various routes, including one from California to Florida.

Her efforts as volunteer chair of the Outpatient Clinic of the Pasadena Hospital led her to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps in 1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1945, she received an honorable discharge as a major, and in 1948 moved to Alaska to farm. But no one would sell land to a woman with no farming experience, so she bought an unfinished farm of 240 acres, 10 cows, an incomplete barn and a cabin in 1949.

She spent several months living in a tent and for the next three years lived in the basement of a house she designed and was having built.

At its peak, Kellogg’s Spring Creek Farm north of Palmer had more than 1,000 acres and more than 120 milk cows.

Beyond her role as a leader in the Mat-Su Valley’s dairy industry, Kellogg was instrumental in shaping the Mat-Su Borough. Her contributions include serving as the only woman on the first assembly from 1963 to 1966; helping Joe Redington start the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race; and serving as a member of the Mat-Su Valley Health Council, Mat-Su Taxpayers Association Board, Valley Hospital Association Board, Valley Hospital Foundation Board, Palmer Historical Society, Pioneers of Alaska Auxiliary No. 11 and the Arctic Institute of North America. She helped establish a number of local museums and the Palmer Library, and was active in the Mat-Su Republican Women’s Club.

Kellogg was awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Alaska Pacific University in 1984. She was honored in 1997 at age 94 with the Alaskan of the Year Denali Award.

She placed 700 acres in a trust to Alaska Pacific University to be used for educational purposes, requiring that much of the land remain in its natural state. She was a member of the APU Board of Trustees for more than 20 years, and the college opened the “Kellogg Campus” on her farm, offering courses and seminars there.

Shortly before her death, Kellogg was honored in Palmer on Memorial Day 2001 as Alaska’s oldest surviving veteran of World War II. She died July 24, 2001, at Valley Hospital in Palmer.

She was 97.

For more information, visit alaskawomenshalloffame.org.

Contact reporter Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.