Valley mourns loss of historic building

If you’re new to the Valley, you may not have noticed the ruins overgrown with cottonwoods across from Rusty’s restaurant in Palmer.

If you’ve lived here awhile, you may remember stately old businesses facing Dahlia Street, later with windows boarded, doors chained, desolate and neglected. Since last Tuesday’s conflagration consumed the old Matanuska Maid warehouse, hurt and indignant voices have raised in protest that this could happen — again. What is it about those relics that made them so dear to the hearts and heritage of so many? What were they about and why were they important?

Among the darkest periods in America’s 20th century was the Great Depression of the early 1930s. Almost 15 percent of the nation was on relief. In the poorest areas, that number climbed to 70 percent. “Relief” was considered degrading by those accustomed to “taking care of their own.”

In 1935, arrangements were made to relocate farmers from the hard-hit states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin to the Matanuska Valley. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Brain-Busters” chose settlers from the north, rather than the “Dust Bowl” areas of the south. The north included some of the highest poverty in the nation, its climate and vegetation were similar to that of the Valley, and it was felt that hardy Scandinavian stock would best adapt to Alaska.

The entire concept of the Matanuska Colony was to establish families on small subsistence farms where they could provide most of their own living while producing some surplus for commercial sale. The purchase of necessities and the sale of their surpluses were to be managed through their own cooperative business association.

In 1936, Matanuska Valley Farmers Cooperative Association formed with backing from the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. ARRC owned and managed facilities, including a grocery and mercantile store, the trading post, a farm supply store, the warehouse, a filling station and repair facility, the garage, a meat, creamery and egg department, produce department, hatchery, cabinet shop, community center water system, power house, dormitory, hospital and school. All but the latter were turned over to the Matanuska Valley Federal Credit Union in 1939.

The Matanuska Colony settlement contract obligated members to do all their buying and selling cooperatively and their land contracts required the same commitment of any future owners. This restriction caused great dissension among the colonists until the ARRC finally dropped it.

Friction and dispute were common as the infant cooperative grew and adjusted to its needs and growth. Colonists were a disparate group and few were experienced in what they were doing. The intricacies of managing so many dissimilar entities, along with accusations of corruption, almost caused the co-op to go bust.

In 1936, MVFCA held a contest choosing a trade name for its products. Dorothy Sheely, a local co-ed, submitted the winning entry, Matanuska Maid. Her $25 winnings bought a bicycle in Anchorage. A visual symbol to represent “the Maid” was created in 1949 by Jim Wilson, then general manager of the co-op. A commercial artist refined is crude sketch of a female skater was then by for use on the co-op’s popular dairy products. Some thought he likened the logo to the well-loved Norwegian figure skater, Olympian and movie star Sonja Henie.

In 1960, Matanuska Maid sought a name for the maid. Mrs. John Secora of Anchorage submitted the winning entry, “Anuska” (Matanuska without the “Mat”).

Every year the board chose one young lady to embody the Matanuska Maid. Colleen “Collie” Pettit Johansen, daughter of farmers John and Jane Seeman of Lazy Mountain, wore the blue velvet costume from 1965 to 1967. She remembers cutting the opening ribbon at the cooperative’s new creamery facility in Anchorage, greeting dignitaries and appearing in Colony Days parades.

“Matanuska Maid sponsored me in the Miss Alaska State Fair competition. As fair queen, I recall scooping and serving endless free ice cream cones to long, long lines of children,” she said.

For decades, the warehouse and trading post were the community center in the lives of local residents. Men and women shopped for hardware, produce, dairy, groceries, dry goods, toys, small appliances, gifts and whatever else was needed. Children dreamed of toys and apparel chosen wistfully for upcoming birthdays or Christmas. Co-op workers and farmers stood firm defying the U.S. Army when it came to take office worker Alice Mikami Snodgrass away to an interment camp during World War II. The community center was a warm and welcoming environment where people watched out for each other.

The “Rusty’s” building was the original Trading Post. When the creamery left that building, it moved into its final home, the building that burned about nine years ago. The old Trading Post became the Rec Hall and later Benson’s Dept. Store, Deb’s, Red Beet, and Rusty’s.

For 40 years, these buildings provided a crucial, animated space where early settlers, colonists and their offspring congregated for supplies and social sustenance in their new lives far, far away from their roots. Those old buildings embrace a repository of memories. Now with the burning of the core buildings, the recollections of that village are let loose to fade away with their last keepers. A community grieves for its own mortality.

Barbara Hecker is a local writer and longtime teacher who writes Inky Visits, a regular history column for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. Send suggestions for places, events and persons to visit and write about to InkyVisits@gmail.com.