During The Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States government implemented the “New Deal.” The relief and recovery programs within the New Deal were aimed at getting Americans working and getting money into their hands. One of those programs, through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA,) was rural rehabilitation. The programs aim was to get displaced families off government provided relief and into resettlement communities. The Matanuska Colony was one such resettlement community that took farmers from the cutover regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan and transplanted them to the Matanuska Valley of Alaska to form a new colony. This program will explore the Matanuska Colony Project and some of the families from Minnesota that made the trek in 1935 in hopes of a new beginning.

Matt Carter is Executive Director for the Dakota County Historical Society. He holds a Master’s Degree in Public History from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Please note that Sibley Site programs are in the DuPuis House at the top of the hill

Photo image of Matanuska colonists arriving at the train station on May 23, 1935, by photographer Mary Nan Gamble. Photo courtesy of the Alaska State Library, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, 1935-1945, Image ID No. ASL-P270-224.