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With hundreds of photographs and descriptions of landmarks, attractions, historic sites and other points of interest, this new book is a must-have volume for anyone who lives in, travels through, or loves Alaska’s beautiful Matanuska Valley! 140 pages, full color, 8.5″ x 10″ paperback, maps, resources, index and photo index.
• $29.95 plus $5.00 postage and handling.
• To order via credit card or Paypal, click the link and send payment to helenhegener@gmail.com
• To order via check or money order, mail your order to Northern Light Media, PO Box 298023, Wasilla, Alaska 99629
• Available at Amazon and IndyBound.
The Dividing River
The Matanuska River, which tumbles out from underneath the glacier of the same name, winds between the coastal Chugach Mountains to the south and the interior Talkeetna Range to the north, providing a clear delineation between the two.
Traditional Center of Trade
The Matanuska River valley was traveled extensively by the early Athabascan Indians, and the Matanuska River country was a traditional center of trade between indigenous peoples of the northern, or interior, lands, and the more southern areas around Cook Inlet. According to Wikipedia, “the indigenous Dena’ina Athabascan name for the rive river is Ch’atanhtnu, based on the root -tanh ‘trail extends out’, meaning literally ‘trail comes out river’.
The English place name Matanuska derives from the Dena’ina ‘Ch’atanhtnu Li’a’, referring to the Matanuska Glacier. Li’a is the Dena’ina word for ‘glacier’ or ‘ice’.”
Talkeetna Mountain Hadrosaur
Many fine fossils have been discovered in the Matanuska Formation on the north side of the Glenn Highway, including the bones of a dinosaur known as the ‘Talkeetna Mountain Hadrosaur,’ the first known occurrence of a hadrosaur in southcentral Alaska.
Free Map and Audio CD
The Glenn Highway, named for an early explorer of the route, is one of three national scenic byways in Alaska. A free map and an audio CD of the route is available at the Mat-Su Visitor Center, located near the junction of the Parks and Glenn Highways.
Mountain peaks so numerous that many remain unnamed, deep river valleys, canyons, creeks, waterfalls, glaciers… For 75 miles the river braids its way along the valley floor, inaccessible for most of the route, but providing an unforgettably scenic panorama for travelers on the Glenn Highway, which roughly parallels the river for its entire course.
The Matanuska Valley is home to an incredible array of wildflowers, from tall stately fireweed and lupine blooms to the tiniest alpine flowers on high mountain slopes.
The Lupine is known by many names, including Blue Bonnet, and is a legume, or a member of the pea family. Parts are toxic.
Sitka roses, which produce delicious rose hips in the fall.
The wild geranium, long known as a useful medicinal plant, derives its name from a Greek word meaning ‘crane.’
Fireweed is common along roads and trails, especially where recent fires or clearing has taken place. Several parts of the plant are edible. Arctic or Dwarf Fireweed is much shorter than the standard variety.
Siberian Iris are found in swampy lowlands in many parts of Alaska. According to Wikipedia, the SIberian Iris is native to north east Turkey, Russia, eastern and central Europe.
Tiny Forget-me-nots, chosen as the Alaska State Flower in 1949, are actually native to England.
The Monkshood (Aconitum delphinifolium) which blooms in June and early July, is one of the most toxic plants known to man. Attaining a height of three feet, with intensely blueish purple or indigo blooms, its powerful poisons were used by the Aleuts to hunt whales with poison-tipped spears. Also known as wolf’s bane as its toxins were used to kill wolves. Handle with care.
The beautiful log building which houses the Dorothy G. Page Museum & Visitor Center, now a National Historic Landmark, was built in 1931 as a community hall for the Wasilla area, at a time when the community was showing growth and development and a communal gathering place was needed. In 1967, during the Alaska Centennial celebration, the building was refurbished to become Wasilla’s first museum.
Today the museum showcases the history of the Wasilla area with a fine collection of relics, artifacts, and what were once everyday useful items to the pioneers who settled the Valley. Displays include a diorama of early-day Wasilla, an assemblage of unique utensils and items which an early homesteader would have used, taxidermy mounts of area wildlife, and a display of tools and items from the Willow Creek Mining District. The museum sponsors programs and lectures which interpret and explain important points in area history, and the museum also maintains the Historic Town Site Park, which preserves and maintains several historic buildings from early Wasilla.
The Dorothy G. Page Museum & Visitor Center is currently open from Tuesday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, and Fridays always offer free admission for Mat-Su Borough residents. The museum also hosts the free Wednesday Night at the Museum events, between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm, for special presentations about the community, the colorful history of the Wasilla area, and local activities.
Adults (13-59): $3.00
Seniors (60+): $2.50
Military (with ID): $2.00
Children (12 and under): FREE
Fridays are always free for Mat-Su Borough residents.
City of Wasilla
Dorothy G. Page Museum
323 N. Main st.
Wasilla, AK 99654
Phone: 907.373.9071
Fax: 907.373.9072
Email: museum@ci.wasilla.ak.us
Buildings at the mine, a shaft and tailings piles are in the background. Photo courtesy of June Price, Sunhusky Productions.
Robert Lee Hatcher
In the fall of 1906, Robert Lee Hatcher discovered the first lode gold claim in the Willow Creek Valley, and his claim was followed by other prospects over the next few years. There’s an excellent biography of Hatcher at the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame website, which notes, “In the September of 1906, Hatcher began the lode gold mining boom in the Willow Creek mining district in the Talkeetna Mountains by recording a quartz-gold claim high on the treeless, granite slopes of Skyscraper Mountain, nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. The outcrop was 1,200 feet above the floor of Fishhook Valley and 200 feet from the crest of the Skyscraper peak in an area of the Talkeetnas known as Hatcher Pass, which is fifty miles northeast of where Anchorage would be established a decade later.”
Lode mining, unlike placer mining, required elaborate tunnels and heavy equipment to reach the gold-bearing ore, so the individuals who made the discoveries merged into mining companies in order to pool their resources and reduce the expenses of mining.
The Alaska Free Gold Mine on Skyscraper Mountain, and Independence Mine on Granite Mountain, were two such discoveries which merged into what is now known as the Independence Mine. In 1938 the two claims were brought together under the Alaska-Pacific Consolidated Mining Company, which became the largest gold producer in the Willow Creek Mining District, with claims covering more than 1,350 acres.
Ore car rails leading out of the Independence Mine. Photo courtesy of June Price, Sunhusky Productions.
34,416 Ounces of Gold
In 1941, the peak year for production, the mine employed over 200 men and produced 34,416 ounces of gold worth $1,204,560 ($17,208,000 at today’s gold prices). Twenty-two families lived in nearby Boomtown, sending eight children to the Territorial school in the bunkhouse. Buildings in the mine complex included two huge bunkhouses, an apartment house, the mine manager’s house, a mess hall, plumbing shop, sheet metal shop, electrical shop, a commissary, warehouse, assay office and more.
Nonessential to the War Effort
In 1942, the War Production Board designated gold mining as nonessential to the war effort and gold mining throughout the United States came to a stop. With a few notable exceptions, the mines closed.
Cottonwood Creek near where it flows into the eastern end of Wasilla Lake.
Route of the Seven Mile Canoe Trail
A primary scenic waterway in the Matanuska Valley, Cottonwood Creek begins in the central part of the Valley, near Niclason Lake, then drops south and crosses under Bogard Road, skirts the northwestern edge of Finger Lake and runs into the east end of Cottonwood Lake, which is one of the chain of lakes crossing the middle of the Valley and part of the route of the Seven Mile Canoe Trail. This popular water journey follows Cottonwood Creek from Finger Lake, Cottonwood Lake, Mud Lake and finally to Wasilla Lake.
Cottonwood Creek empties into Knik Arm
From the west end of Cottonwood Lake the creek drains into Mud Lake, then becomes a creek again for a short ways before emptying into upper Wasilla Lake and finding an outlet in the corner of lower Wasilla Lake. From there it crosses the Parks Highway and winds through forests and suburban backyards all the way to the bluffs of Cook Inlet, where it cuts a serpentine path across the Inlet mud before joining Knik Arm below Settler’s Bay.
The Wes Grover farm is part of the original Springer homestead. Photo by Albert Marquez.
John August Springer
In October of 1914, Palmer-area pioneer John August Springer filed for homestead rights to 320 acres of benchland located on the north bank of a sweeping bend in the Matanuska River, with a commanding view of Pioneer Peak and the Knik River Valley to the south and east.
Springer built a log cabin and other buildings and proved up on his land, receiving the patent in 1920. Fifteen years later, in 1935, he sold part of his homestead to the United States government for $7.50 an acre for the Matanuska Colony Project, which would bring 203 new families from the depression-era Midwest to build their own homes in the Valley.
Springer System, June 7, 1941. Photo by U.S. Army Air Corps.
Matanuska Colony Project
The area south of Palmer which became known as the Springer System, with it’s looping roads named Inner Springer and Outer Springer, is the site of some of the richest and levelest farmland in the Matanuska Valley. Of the more than 200 farms which became the Matanuska Colony Project, for which the federal government offered financing and support, over one-quarter of them were located in the Springer area.
Only a few notched logs remain to mark the location of John Springer’s cabin overlooking the Matanuska River.
Farms and Subdivisions
Today the Springer System is a network of picturesque farms which would pass for almost anywhere in the midwest if not for the towering peaks of the Chugach Range. While an ever-increasing number of farms are being subdivided for tract housing, there are still enough hayfields, pastures, croplands and massive Colony barns to give the area a friendly rural feel.
At the end of E. DePriest Avenue, in the southeast corner of the Springer System, the logs of John Springer’s cabin can still be seen on a bluff overlooking the Matanuska River.
Knik Arm, looking northeast from Point Mackenzie
Only a River . . .
Knik Arm is the northernmost branch of Cook Inlet, a great body of water which stretches 180 miles from the Gulf of Alaska and splits at Anchorage into Knik Arm and the more southern Turnagain Arm.
William Bligh, who served as Captain Cook’s Sailing Master on his third and final voyage, thought that both Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm were the mouths of rivers and not the opening to the Northwest Passage.
Under Cook’s orders Bligh organized a party to travel up Knik Arm, and they quickly returned to report that Knik Arm indeed led only to a river.
Early Knik
Early Navigation
Boats of any kind are a rare sight on Knik Arm today, but in times long past the Arm was traversed by rowboats, freighters, and sailing ships.
George Palmer, a merchant who owned stores in Knik and near the later site of Palmer, frequently crossed the Knik Arm, as cited by Valley historian Colleen Mielke: “Palmer’s first schooner, the two masted ‘C. T. Hill,’ arrived at Knik Harbor June 7, 1913. Leaving his store in the hands of a clerk, Palmer and crew sailed the schooner from Goose Bay to San Francisco, two or three times a summer and brought back merchandise for his store.” And: “In the spring of 1915, Palmer traveled to Seward, by dog sled, where he boarded a steamer to San Francisco to purchase a newer schooner named ‘The Lucy.’ Palmer and ‘The Lucy’ arrived at Goose Bay on May 3, 1915.”
April 1907, Palmer’s launch via Knik to Seldovia
Colleen Mielke later reports: “A fearless boatman, Palmer made routine trips from Knik to Tyonek, Sunrise, Hope and Seldovia, bucking the relentless Turnagain Arm wind and tide, in a small open gas boat.”
Today’s navigators generally avoid the silty, churning, tide-wrenched waters of Knik Arm. There are far easier ways to get from point A to point B.
Excerpted from the forthcoming book, The Beautiful Matanuska Valley.
Early Electrification of Anchorage
![The first Eklutna Power House. The words ‘Anchorage Light & Power’ Company are engraved on the side of the building. circa 1930-32. Walter W. Hodge papers 1925-1948 [UAF 2003-63-62].](https://matanuskavalley.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/oie_91373pfgmwp4o.jpg)
The first Eklutna Power House. The words ‘Anchorage Light & Power’ Company are engraved on the side of the building. circa 1930-32. Walter W. Hodge papers 1925-1948 [UAF 2003-63-62].
A concrete arch dam, 98 feet long and 61 feet high, diverted water from the Eklutna River and into an 1,800 foot tunnel through Goat Mountain, to the concrete powerhouse. The Old Eklutna Power Plant provided 2,000 kW of power, during which time the city grew from a small railroad settlement into the largest city in Alaska. In an era dominated by federal projects, Frank Reed built an independent power company which supplied the city of Anchorage for over 25 years. Reed sold his power plant to the city for $1,000,000 in 1943.
When the New Eklutna Power Project was authorized in 1950, the old Eklutna plant was shut down and the dam allowed to fill with silt and gravel. The powerhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The New Eklutna Power Project
New Eklutna power plant, built in 1955
The New Eklutna Power Project, funded and built by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, was built several miles upriver from the old power plant. A 4.5 mile long tunnel was bored through East Twin Peak to provide water for the New Eklutna Power Plant. Drilling the nine foot diameter tunnel from both the Knik River side and the Eklutna Lake side began in 1951 and connected in October, 1953 – a marvelous engineering feat for its day.
The Eklutna Project was dedicated on August 29, 1955, providing a 33,000 kW capacity to the city of Anchorage, the military bases of Fort Richardson and Elmendorf, and communities in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Wes Grover’s farm sits at the edge of the Matanuska River, below 6,398′ Pioneer Peak
A major peak in the Chugach mountain range, Pioneer Peak is the most prominent landmark in the Matanuska Valley, rising 6,398 feet over the sea-level Knik River. Named in 1939 to honor the hardworking settlers who called the Matanuska Valley their home, Pioneer Peak’s iconic profile can be found on business logos around the Valley.
A popular hiking destination, the Pioneer Ridge-Austin Helmers Trail climbs the eastern shoulder of the mountain, starting barely 200 feet off the river and ascending steeply to the southern summit by traversing the northeast slope of the mountain. Access to the trailhead is 3.5 miles up Knik River Road. Although very steep and rated as difficult, the nine mile hike to the ridge and back can be completed in one day, and offers spectacular views of the Valley and Knik Glacier.
At the Big Lake Yacht Club
Big Lake
Sailboats moored at the Big Lake Yacht Club
Wild Rose near Big Lake
Sun cruisers on Big Lake
Wild iris near Big Lake
On Big Lake
Old swing at an abandoned homestead along Fairview Loop Road, south of Wasilla.
Fireweed near Wasilla.
Fairview Loop Road, looking south toward the Chugach Mountains across Knik Arm.
Lake Lucille
Siberian Iris in Wasilla.
Local vendor in Wasilla.
Cottonwood Creek near where it flows into the eastern end of Wasilla Lake.
Big Top ready for a gathering, north of Wasilla.
Temperature in Wasilla at 11 pm in the middle of June.
Harebells near Wasilla.
Pioneer Peak seen across the eastern end of Wasilla Lake.
Sign at a private airpark north of Wasilla.
Private planes north of Wasilla.
Flower baskets at the Best Western hotel, Wasilla
Chugach Mountains across Wasilla Lake
A few photos from around the Palmer area, under consideration for the book.
Horses in a pasture along Farm Loop Road, northwest of Palmer.
Sitka roses near Palmer.
Along Inner Springer Loop Road, south of Palmer.
Colony barn built in 1936 for the Ferber Bailey family.
Totem pole south of Palmer, along Outer Springer Loop Road.
Daises in a Palmer flowerbed.
Freight wagon at the old Carrs Shopping Center, Palmer.
Knik Glacier, east of Palmer, seen over the Matanuska River from the Glenn Highway.
Pretty pinto pony along Farm Loop Road, northwest of Palmer.
Spring Creek Farm, off Farm Loop Road, northwest of Palmer.
A classic log cabin at the corner of Campbell Road and the Palmer Fishhook Road, northwest of Palmer.
In her classic book on Wasilla titled ‘Early Days in Wasilla,’ subtitled ‘A Study of a Frontier Town in Alaska’ (copyright 1963 by Louise Potter, reprinted in 1978 and again in 2002 by Alaskana Books), Louise Potter wrote the following:
“I am convinced that what keeps people in the valley when they first come here and are not yet ‘established’ is actually a psychological gain, the sense of freedom, the relaxed tempo of life, the sense of dealing with problems which are closer to the margin, to the realities (and often the primitive ones close to survival), a sense that here a man is on his own where his individual resourcefulness and foresight really counts, where he can have land of his own, where he can have the creative pleasure of seeing something (his house or his farm) growing from ‘scratch’ under his own hand, and – always – in this valley there is the bounty of hunting, fishing, wild fruit; the great beauty of the mountains, the sea, the park-like woodland; the elbow room, perhaps things of which the menfolk would not like to admit the notice or enjoy – all of these or some combination of them is, I believe, what makes life on this frontier so worth the struggle.”
A wide-ranging assortment of photographs from this past week, under consideration for inclusion the book:
North Alaska Street in Palmer
Palmer is the agricultural heart of Alaska
Pony at the Colony Days kids’ area
At the Palmer Visitor’s Center and Museum
Sparky the Firedog at the Colony Days parade in Palmer
Wes Grover’s farm sits at the edge of the Matanuska River, below Pioneer Peak
An inquisitive squirrel
The Chugach Mountains across Knik Arm, which forms the south boundary of the Matanuska Valley
Old workhorse out to pasture near Fairview Loop Road
Poppies and dandelions[/caption]
At the skatepark in Wasilla
A winding dirt road east of Palmer[/caption]
Near Palmer
Glass artwork at Palmer’s Friday Fling market
Crabapple blossoms near Bodenburg Butte
Dock at Lake Lucille, Wasilla
Classic cars at the Colony Days parade in Palmer
Colorful bench near Palmer
Bell/McKinley/McDonald barn, built 1936
Musk ox skeleton at the Musk Ox Farm
Horses resting in a pasture north of Palmer
With a subject as great as the Matanuska Valley one question comes to mind right away: Where does the Valley begin and end? What separates the Matanuska Valley from it’s big brother, the Susitna Valley? It seems reasonable to count the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains as bordering the north, east, and southern edges of the Valley, but is there an easily identifiable boundary on the western border, that which stretches away to Mt. Susitna and the distant Alaska Range? And what about that eastern edge… How far up the Matanuska River is still considered part of the Valley? To the glacier which gives the name, or some indefinable point before that…
Interesting questions. No answers yet. Stay tuned.
The Beautiful Matanuska Valley is only the working title of this newest book project, but it might become the actual title if no other name makes itself so abundantly appropriate. This title describes what this book is all about, the incredible beauty of this place I call home.
There will be more than beauty in the book, of course, as I’m also delving into the history, the geography, the growth and development and all the rest of the dynamics which have come together to make this place what it is.
But the heart of the book will be photographic, and the key factors in the photographs will be showing how incredibly diverse and astonishingly beautiful this unique place is, in all seasons, in all kinds of weather, and throughout its short but exciting history. The Beautiful Matanuska Valley says it all.
The Beautiful Matanuska Valley 