What’s in a name?

There are many streets and structures throughout the Valley that have more than just a name to call their own, they also have some local history.

• Tommy Moe Drive in Wasilla is named for the former skier and 1994 Olympian who was a one-time Palmer resident and Palmer High School student.

• Cottle Loop, located off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway is named for the Cottle family, which homesteaded in the area.

• Bodenburg Loop is named for John Henry Bodenburg, who homesteaded in the area in 1917. He developed the first farm in the Butte area and had the first cultipacker machine in the Valley. When the old Matanuska River Bridge was torn out, he lost interest in farming and died in 1934.

• Inner and Outter Springer Loop is named for John Springer, who homesteaded the area near where the Alaska State Fairgrounds is today.

• Bogard Road is named for W.J. Bogard. “Bogard was an early homesteader and he had quite an operation going there,” said Gerry Keeling, local historian and curator at the Colony House museum in Palmer. He received the seventh Matanuska Valley homestead patent in 1919 about five miles west of Palmer on the north shore of Finger Lake. Bogard died in the early 1930s, and Colonists Earl and Louise Barry purchased his 70 acres in 1936.

• Barry’s Resort Drive, which intersects Bogard Road, is named for the Barrys, who after purchasing the Bogard property established Barry’s Resort on Finger Lake, which later became the Palmer Elks Lodge.

• Clark Wolverine Road is named for Frank Clark, who homesteaded in the Valley in 1932. “The Wolverine part of the name comes from Wolverine Lake,” Keeling said. At one time, Clark had more than 500 head of sheep on his ranch at the foot of Lazy Mountain east of Palmer.

• Hemmer Road is named for Pat and Cora Hemmer, who arrived as Colonists in 1935.

—Greg Johnson