Word: matanuska
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nurse in Michigan before he and his wife moved to the valley, now harvests about 14 tons of potatoes per acre (v. average U.S. yield of eight tons per acre), grows cabbages the size of medicine balls. Another farmer, Wyoming-born Victor Falk, 64, owns 900 acres on the Matanuska River, is raising hogs (1959 target: 700), the first hog yield to be fed on grain stored in the new elevator of the booming ($6,000,000 a year) Matanuska Valley Farmers Cooperating Association. Says Falk: "You can make a living here with the line of least resistance...
...women and children, arms laden with bundles, eyes filled with bewilderment and doubt. What they saw gave them no cause for rejoicing: a bleak wilderness surrounded by stern, snowcapped mountains, and in the wilderness a dismal tent city sprawling in the mud under a dour sky. This was the Matanuska Valley, 50 miles northeast of Anchorage, in south-central Alaska. This was the promised land-promised by the wide-eyed Federal Emergency Relief Administration to depression-ridden, red-blooded American families who wanted to leave home and make their way, in fine old American tradition, against the wilderness. This...
...last week the New Deal's dream valley (est. pop. 4,000), brimming with prosperity, was Alaska's biggest farming region. In the 23 years of colonization, Matanuska's feeble 1,000 acres has grown to about 13,000 acres of cropland worth some $6,000,000, accounts for 55% of Alaska's salable agriculture (1957 share: $1,854,000 in dairying, potatoes, berries, green vegetables). For a total outlay of about $5,400,000, the Matanuska experiment, says Anchorage Times Publisher Bob Atwood, is "one of the best investments Uncle Sam ever made...
Last week the prosperous Matanuska farmers had finished their harvest and contractors completed a new $400,000 blacktop road through the valley town of Palmer. The valley was growing faster than the wildest dreamers had hoped, seemed destined to be even more prosperous under statehood, since growing Alaska still imports about 90% of all its food. For the 40 or so original Matanuska colonists-out of the original 900-who had looked for the promised land and found hard work, the promise suddenly seemed close at hand...
Cars were halted in two half-mile-long lines at the Matanuska Valley town of Palmer. Blankets and C-rations were assigned, though not actually issued. But mechanics inspected every gas tank, oil gauge, transmission, differential, battery, oil filter, radiator and tire to make sure everything was in working order. Soldiers handed out dummy orders and authorized mock money allotments, and women were instructed on driving in convoys for the sake of safety...