Youth and communities connect at historic property

For the Frontiersman

WASILLA — Machetanz Elementary School first-graders spent the day at Margaret and LeRoi Heaven’s Diamond Ridge Hayfield recently.

The 40-acre hayfield, protected under the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Resource Conservation Services Farm and Rough Lands Protection Program, is also home to several historically significant buildings and artifacts.

LeRoi Heaven, former president of the Wasilla-Knik Historical Society, had collected and restored original Mat-Su pioneer’s buildings and farm equipment and relocated them to a slice of the hayfield into what now looks like a small town.

The Machetanz students performed a community service project at Diamond Ridge Hayfield by cleaning debris, trash and other materials left over from the windy Alaska winter. They cleaned windows and swept out many of the dusty historic buildings.

The event was a celebration of a yearlong focus by the classes of Colene Mead, Kristina Booth and Cathy Ledbetter on the Iditarod National Historic Trail, which originally would have crossed through or near the hayfield.

The Iditarod National Historic Trail also sponsored Iditarod Trail in Every Classroom, a place-based education program designed to train and encourage teachers to get students out of the brick-and-mortar classroom and outside for healthy, hands-on learning and community experiences.

Mead is finishing her tenure in the inaugural year of the Iditarod Trail in Every Classroom program. The board of the Iditarod National Historic Trail was having its quarterly meeting here in the Valley and joined the students for hay wagon rides and a hot dog lunch cooked over a campfire.

The Heavens will host school field trips nearly every day through the end of the school year. The Machetanz group was the first and left the area cleaned up and ready for a summer of events.