Seeing it through: Palmer Colonist Monument finished after hiatus

PALMER — The Palmer Historical Society recently finished up a 20-plus year project with the completion of the Colonist Monument.

The monument, intended to honor the large influx of settlers in Palmer and the surrounding valley following the depression, has its origins starting in 1997. Sheri Hamming, president of the Palmer Historical Society (PHS), said the late Dan Strouse — then a PHS member and local resident Helen Hoffman, designed the project. After Strouse died in April 2000, Hamming said the project seemed to be placed on the back burner.

With help from the City of Palmer, a base of Matanuska River rock and block of Minnesota Swedish green granite was put in place. An inscription on the granite read “The Matanuska Colony. There is a new day and this is it!”

That part of the monument remained on-site and unfinished. Hamming said completion of the monument was resurrected about three years ago. She said the PHS wanted to finish the monument project while Carol Strouse, Dan’s wife, was still an active PHS board member.

Garley’s sculpture depicts a colony family after disembarking the Alaska Railroad train in Palmer in 1935. Following the Great Depression of the early 1930’s, Hamming explained one of then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” projects involved settling remote parts of the United States. The then territory of Alaska was one of those areas.

“The Alaska colony is one of the most well documented,” Hamming said. “The (federal) government had set up an experiment station with the hopes of growing crops (in the Valley). They wanted to do more with agriculture coming out of the depression.”

Hamming explained that the City of Palmer was plotted.

“Local homesteaders received 40-acre tracts which they could sell to colonists,” Hamming explained. “Two-hundred families arrived and drew numbers out of a hat and that decided where they would farm. The city’s historic district (which contained the settlers’ homesteads and farms) is set up on one side of the (city’s railroad tracks) and the local business owners and others were on the other side of the railroad tracks.”

Hamming explained that when deciding on who received the offer to come north, federal officials decided to focus on families of the Upper Midwest—the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. That part of the country was predominately inhabited by people of Finnish and Swedish decent, and although it was considered rough country for farming, the industry did take a strong foothold in the region.

Those making the long trek northwest to Alaska carried on that fortitude and determination when settling this part of the state.