Alaska’s Early
Agriculture
By Orlando
W. Miller
From
Orlando W. Miller’s book The Frontier in Alaska and the Matanuska
Colony, published in 1975 by Yale University Press. Excerpts from
Chapter 1: “Before the Matanuska Colony.” Used for educational purposes
with permission of the publisher.
Alaska
in the early 1930s, just before the start of the Matanuska colonization
project, had changed little since the gold rush days. The idea of Alaska
popular outside, and in Alaska too, a compound of Jack London, Rex Beach,
and Robert W. Service, was not entirely mistaken. The completion of
the Alaska Railroad had brought the outside a little nearer. The total
population of the territory, little more than 60,000, was composed largely
of town dwellers, even though most of the 30,000 Indians and Eskimos
lived in villages too small to be classified as urban. Only four towns
had populations over 2,500, but the eight or ten largest communities,
the centers of transportation, mining, and fishing, included nearly
half the white population.
With
approximate knowledge of how other American frontiers had developed,
and in the belief that in the normal course of things the territory
should already have followed a similar pattern, many Alaskans were by
the 1930s convinced that federal neglect and mismanagement, combined
with the influence of outside interests (mainly the canneries’ lobby),
explained Alaska’s stagnation.
Homestead
Act was applied only in 1898 and then with an 80-acre limitation and
without the surveys that would have made it effective; that there was
no delegate to Congress until 1906; and that territorial organization
was not granted until 1912. All this irritated and inconvenienced those
who were already in Alaska, but the great complaint was that no more
had come, that there had been no large-scale migration to Alaska. The
nearly static population of the territory was regarded as shameful,
as proof in itself that the American pioneering urge had been frustrated.
As
their attempts at agriculture failed, the Russians in Alaska had remained
dependent on food imports, and for 30 years after the American purchase
the reports of unfavorable conditions by travelers and officials gave
little reason to suppose that there would ever be any important development
of Alaskan farming. Yet travelers also frequently reported the surprising
discovery that vegetables and some other crops would actually grow.
With the gold rushes and the possibility of an increasing population,
agriculture in Alaska was no longer regarded as a fascinating oddity.
In 1897, supported by a congressional grant of $5,000, three special
agents traveled through and reported on southeastern Alaska, the south
central region, Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula, and the Yukon Valley.
Although they cautiously mentioned difficulties — the lack of land
laws, rough terrain, excessive moisture in the southeast, short growing
seasons, bogs and peaty soils, uncertainty of markets, and problems
of transportation — the investigators reported a variety of crops
that could be grown, the supposedly rich soil in sections of the panhandle,
and the vegetable gardening and even cattle raising already undertaken.
The report urged the establishment of experiment stations and pointed
out the benefits to the existing and expected white population and to
the natives. [See US Department of Agriculture, “A Report to Congress
on Agriculture in Alaska, Including Reports by Walter H. Evans, Benton
Killin and Sheldon Jackson,” Bulletin no. 48, Office of Experiment
Stations (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1898).]
The
three-man report struck one note that was to be endlessly repeated in
discussions of Alaska for the next 60 years — a comparison of Alaska’s
latitude, area, climate, soil, resources, and population with those
of Scandinavia, Finland, northern Scotland, Iceland, and northern Russia.
Following
the recommendations of the report, which was endorsed by the Secretary
of Agriculture, experiment stations were authorized for Alaska. However
there was no territorial organization or land-grant agricultural college
through which the program would operate, as in other territories and
states. A station was opened in the summer of 1898 at Sitka, then still
the capital, in spite of its limited areas of tillable soil and the
excessively wet climate. It was directed by Charles Christian Georgeson,
then 47 years old and about to begin a 30-year career in Alaska agricultural
experiment work and in publicizing Alaska farming possibilities.
In
his native Denmark, C. C. Georgeson had studied agriculture. As a special
agent of the (U.S.) Department of Agriculture he had studied the dairy
industry in Denmark and had then been appointed special agricultural
agent in Alaska. His training and experience and his following
years of work in Alaska lent authority to his optimistic estimates of
the territory’s agricultural potential. Before the work of the experiment
station was more than started, Georgeson published an account of Alaska
farming based only on his summer work of 1898 at Sitka and on some supplemental
work at Skagway. In it he quoted enthusiastic comments of a few small
gardeners and pointed to the growth of agriculture as the hope for the
natives of Alaska and the basis for the general development of the territory.
Speaking of the great wealth in fish, furs, minerals, and forests that
waited investment and development, he explained that the greatest drawback
to the development of all these resources has been the fact that the
Territory has so far had no agriculture … The white population of
the Territory is dependent upon the farmers of the States for maintenance.
In
1899 another station was opened at Kenai, although there were no roads
and all development in the area depended on irregular water transportation.
That station was closed in 1908, but others were established. The river
freight and passenger traffic to the gold fields seemed to indicate
that the Yukon basin would be the site of permanent settlement. In 1900
Georgeson surveyed the site of an experiment station across the river
from the village of Rampart, within 100 miles of the Arctic Circle.
In the short summers, through periods of almost continuous daylight,
grains, root crops, vegetables, and berries were raised successfully,
but the development of the area never came, the peak of river traffic
passed, and the village dwindled; in 1925 the Rampart station was closed
for lack of an appropriation. Another station at Copper Center lasted
from 1903 to 1909, but there too the expected settlement failed to appear,
and only one of six grain crops was successful. After 1907 a station
was maintained at Kodiak for livestock experiments, but the cattle fell
off cliffs, sickened and died of impaction from eating too much dead,
wet grass, and the remainder had to be removed when in 1912 the eruption
of Mount Kenai 100 miles away covered the range with 18 inches of volcanic
ash. After two years the cattle were returned, but half the herd was
then found to be tubercular. After treatment, the sound cattle were
removed to Matanuska.
The
two other experiment stations, Fairbanks established in 1907, and Matanuska,
in 1917, continued to operate after the others were closed when experiment
work in Alaska was cut from the Department of Agriculture budget in
1931. For one year the Alaska Railroad supported the two stations, and
then in 1935 they were taken over by the Alaska Agricultural College
and School of Mines (now University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural
Resources & Agricultural Sciences).
C.
C. Georgeson, directing all the experimental work at the various stations
until 1928, was a most enthusiastic publicist for Alaska agriculture.
By 1902 he was carrying the good news of Alaska to a wider audience.
During the preceding five years, he wrote, the prediction that Alaska
would become a great and powerful state had become simply a common-sense
view, an obvious conclusion based on the resources of the territory
and the high order of agricultural possibilities. He estimated that
Alaska could furnish 320-acre homesteads to 200,000 families and could
support a population of at least three million. To prove his case he
cited the example of Finland, a country less than one-fourth Alaska’s
size, without Alaska’s wealth in mines and fisheries, with fewer agricultural
advantages, but with a population of more than 2.6 million. The
failure of settlement he attributed to the difficulty in obtaining land
title. To locate on unsurveyed land, a settler had to buy soldier’s
additional homestead entry script at $5 to $15 an acre and then pay
a surveyor’s charges, making a farm on wild land in Alaska as expensive
as one in almost any developed state. Under the regulations then in
effect, changed in 1903, a homesteader had an 80-acre limit, which Georgeson
thought too small for the stock-raising that he expected to be the leading
form of Alaska agriculture.
The
extremes to which enthusiasm could push writers on Alaska is illustrated
by an article on the vegetable gardens planted by members of the International
Polar Expedition at Point Barrow in 1881-83. Telling of the seeds that
were planted within 200 yards of the Arctic Ocean, in soil that thawed
to a depth of three to nine inches, and of how, in the continuous Arctic
summer sunlight, vegetables germinated, matured, and were harvested
in 27 days, the author describes the quick growth of the wildflowers
and earth-hugging plants of the tundra and called Alaska’s northern
coastal area “nature’s garden . . . the most extensive, the least
cultivated, the most productive of any on the American continent.”
A
critic warned that Georgeson’s enthusiasm might be misleading and
pointed out that Alaska farmers had high production costs. To succeed,
Alaska agriculture would have to compete at the price levels of efficient
agriculture in California, Oregon, and Washington, plus the cost of
transportation to Alaska. However, the information and advice prepared
by Georgeson for intended settlers in Alaska conveyed, more effectively
than any criticism, an impression of the difficulty of agricultural
settlement and the endless labor required of pioneer settlers.
Except for some grazing areas on river and tidal flats and lower mountain
slopes, all agricultural land required slow, laborious clearing. Trees
had to be felled and the logs skidded away. Stumps had to be removed
with grubbing hoe and ax, or sometimes with fire. The larger stumps
might be pulled with chain and block and a team of horses or oxen, but
the majority of settlers who had no work animals had to use heavy, homemade
windlass arrangements turned with a 20- or 30-foot pole. Slashing, felling,
and skidding, stump pulling, windrowing debris, and burning stumps and
roots did not end the labor. A blanket of dense, springy moss, often
2- to 3-feet thick and laced with roots of trees and low, creeping bushes,
had to be removed. Sometimes it could be burned where it was, but normally
it was too wet and had to be cut and chopped, piled to dry, and then
slowly burned while the pile was repeatedly turned to expose still wet
moss.
Having
cleared a few acres, the new farmer would find that his land required
several years of cultivation before it would produce satisfactory crops,
and even then heavy fertilization was needed for good results. The acidity
of the soil made applications of lime at the rate of 500 pounds per
acre desirable, but lime was imported and costly. Barnyard manure was
scarce where farm animals were few, and for settlers in coastal regions
Georgeson recommended the application of seaweed at the backbreaking
rate of 30 tons per acre.
In
the two areas that eventually became the centers of what agriculture
Alaska developed — the Tanana and Matanuska valleys —some small
farming and gardening followed mining and transportation. After the
discovery of gold in 1902 in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena
rivers and the appearance of new mining camps such as Ester, Cleary,
and Chatanika, the new town of Fairbanks became the center of additional
prospecting and of transportation and supply for the interior gold fields.
Local gardeners and farmers began to produce some vegetables and potatoes
for the town and camps and hay and grain for the horses used in freighting.
At the same time the liberalization of the homestead regulations in
Alaska, allowing entry on unsurveyed land and increasing the maximum
size of entries from the substandard 80 acres to 320, was described
by the governor as the foundation of Alaska’s future prosperity and
an attraction that would soon bring thousands of farmers from the Middle
West to Alaska. However, in a few years the larger acreage limit did
not seem wholly a blessing. Although later Alaska boosters complained
that the standard quarter-section homestead was too small for Alaska,
in 1913 the first territorial legislature regarded 320 acres as too
much and believed that requiring one-eighth of a homestead claim to be
cleared and cultivated imposed an almost impossible task. The legislature
memorialized Congress, asking that the size of entry be reduced to 160
acres, or even 80, and that the cultivation requirement be reduced to
one-twentieth of the claim.
In
1914, a Department of Agriculture survey of Alaska repeated Georgeson’s
estimate of 100,000 square miles of land fit for agriculture and grazing
and listed the Tanana Valley as a primary area for future farm settlement.
The chief ground for optimism was that the high cost of freight from
outside acted as a protective
tariff and gave the local farmers
an advantage; however, there were difficulties with the weather and
costly land clearing, and local freight rates were high enough to prevent
farmers from disposing of their products at markets only 100 or 200
miles away. One inflated estimate placed the number of homesteaders
in Alaska in 1917 at 1,400 but there were few enough actual farmers
so that those around Fairbanks, for example, were all known by name.
The
Fairbanks experiment station, established in 1907, demonstrated the
possibilities for farming in the region and distributed to farmers the
seed for hardy strains of vegetables and grains. Photographs of the
well-tended experiment station fields, crops, and livestock were used
for years in official reports and in other articles, usually with the
implication that the pictures showed simply “a typical Alaskan farm.”
Until the 1920s a large part of what Alaska farmers produced supplied
the need later filled by coal, oil, and gasoline-fuel for transportation.
Raising hay and grain for horses kept a number of farmers occupied.
One stage line from Fairbanks to Valdez kept 175 horses for its coaches,
wagons, and sleds, and in 1920 there were over 1,000 horses used in
hauling, compared to only 385 horses used on Alaska farms. In the 1920s
as trucks, cars, and the Alaska Railroad replaced horses, a part of
the already small Alaska agricultural market disappeared.
A
few of the early settlers in the Matanuska-Susitna region and the upper
Knik Arm area had done a little gardening and farming from about 1898,
and the experiment station at Sitka sent seeds and asked reports on
their efforts. Until about 1914 settlement in the region was limited
to a few homesteads and to gardening and potato growing by men who looked
upon their tracts as occasional residences between periods of employment
in mining, trapping, freighting, and prospecting. Most of them were
bachelors, accustomed to life in sparsely settled regions and familiar
with the techniques necessary for living by a mixture of occupations.
The type persisted after more intensive settlement of the region began.
Years later the general manager of the Alaska Railroad explained to
the Secretary of the Interior one reason for the creeping progress of
agriculture:
Farming
in Alaska has not progressed as well as it should owing to the fact
that the majority of the so-called farmers are old, broken-down prospectors,
most of whom are single men. They have no cows and no poultry and in
many cases these prospectors acquire a homestead only for the purpose
of putting up a shack where they could live during the winter months,
as the cost of living in hotels in the towns was too high.
In
their soil reconnaissance of Alaska, Hugh H. Bennett and Thomas D. Rice
estimated that there were about 1,000 acres cleared in the Matanuska
Valley and perhaps 500 being cultivated, and they calculated that the
region, together with the Kenai Peninsula could support ten thousand
160-acre farms, or an agricultural population of fifty thousand. [see
“Soil Reconnaissance in Alaska, With an Estimate of the Agricultural
Possibilities,” Washington, DC: GPO, 1915].
To promote the settlement of the region, and at the same time to create
additional freight business for the railroad, the Department of the
Interior in 1916 designated a Land and Industrial Commission to publicize
Alaska resources and development, to supply information to prospective
settlers, to encourage development of agriculture, and to aid in the
development of markets for farm products. Andrew Christensen of the
General Land Office was made head of the commission with headquarters
at Seward. In 1916 the commission reported 300 to 400 homesteaders in
the Matanuska and Susitna valleys, all busy clearing land and preparing
to supply the growing market with potatoes and vegetables. In the whole
region along the line of the railroad north of Seward there were an
estimated 500 to 1,000 settlers. In 1916 the townsites of Matanuska
and Wasilla were laid out by the commission, and from that time the
older settlement of Knik began to wither until in a few years it was
deserted.
In
his report for 1917, Governor J. F. A. Strong spoke with satisfaction
of the gradual increase in the territory’s permanent population, largely
through the increase in farming in the Tanana and Matanuska valleys,
and of the growth of the agricultural market since the start of construction
on the Alaska Railroad. He mentioned also the cooperative action of
Matanuska farmers in building a potato storage house, the agricultural
fairs at Sitka, Fairbanks, and the new town of Anchorage.
In
the next few years, Governors Riggs and Scott C. Bone reported the disastrous
influenza epidemic of 1918, floods at Seward, Juneau, and Nenana, and
a fire in the business district of Fairbanks. The census of 1920 showed
a decline in population from 64,356 to 55,036. But with sufficient determination
some grounds for optimism could be found. As it seemed in official reports,
the remaining population of the territory was solidly committed to life
in Alaska. The 100,000 square miles of agricultural and grazing land
beckoned to settlers. In 1920 the first flour mill in Alaska was opened
at Fairbanks by the Tanana Valley Agricultural Association, and in 1922
the mill turned 35 tons of wheat into flour. The local wheat yield was
nearly twenty bushels per acre. There were 62 active farmers in the
Fairbanks district, and many inquiries came from prospective settlers
outside. By 1922 the Alaska Railroad was all but completed, with only
the Tanana River bridge at Nenana and the change of the Nenana-Fairbanks
section from narrow to standard gauge still to be finished. Even before
completion, freight and passengers were moving over sections of the
railroad, and its effect on Alaska growth was confidently awaited.
Governor Bone, in his report for 1923, announced that the year had been
Alaska’s most successful, not because of growth of population or influx
of industry, but because the territory’s greatest need —to be known
to the outside world —had been met by the publicity given to President
Harding’s visit to Alaska.
However,
in spite of the modest rush of homesteaders to several areas along the
railroad, in 1920 there were only 364 farms and 5,736 improved acres.
The average size of farms, 249 acres, had increased partly because much
of the homesteading had been done before 1916, while the maximum entry
was 320 acres, and because at least 22 fox farms were included in the
total. The average improved acreage per farm was 15.8 acres, about half
of what it would have been had the minimum homesteading requirement
for clearing and cultivation been
In
1923, in the areas that were advertised as the chief agricultural regions
— the Fairbanks district and the Anchorage and Matanuska districts
— there was a total of 90 farmers with 22,127 acres, but only 1,421
acres were cultivated.
Commenting
on the general stagnation of the territory and telling what it called
“The Low-Down Truth of Alaska,” the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner recalled
past boasting of the supposed 20,000 population in the Fairbanks area
and argued that the population had not dwindled because of federal bureaucracy
but because those who had struck it rich had left the territory and
the drifters and “grafters” had disappeared with the gambling dens
and dance halls. The newspaper repeated the list of the advantages of
the region-the rich coal deposits, the hardly touched placer and lode
gold, the 100 million acres of unoccupied land in the Fairbanks Land
District (roughly the whole interior region north of the Alaska Range),
the 30,000 acres near Fairbanks surveyed and not filed on, and half
of all surveyed land still unoccupied after twenty years. It repeated
the argument that too much of Alaska’s food needs came in from outside
and deplored the fact that half the settlers who had taken land in the
Tanana Valley had left and that no more than half those who remained
would put in a crop that year.
The
obvious contrast between the small production of Alaska farms and the
volume of food imports to the territory seemed an invitation to farm
settlement. The Department of the Interior calculated that the region
served by the Alaska Railroad, the so-called railbelt, annually imported
$2 million worth of farm and dairy products that could be produced locally,
and it estimated that with feeder roads being constructed in the railbelt,
there was room for 200 additional farmer-settlers a year. However, the
population along the 471 miles of railroad was small. The three places
that could be called towns — Seward, Anchorage, and Fairbanks —had
a total population in 1930 of only 5,207, and both Anchorage and Fairbanks
were smaller than they had been in their boom days.
The
management of the Alaska Railroad shared with territorial officials,
chambers of commerce, and the staffs of the experiment stations an interest
in promoting the growth of the territory through settlement. That had
been the announced object of the construction of the railroad; in fact,
the railroad, which ran regularly at a loss, could not be efficiently
or profitably operated until larger population and production increased
freight revenues. It was frequently suggested that the railroad could
actively recruit settlers. In 1927, a Mrs. Arthur J. Downes of Anchorage
suggested to Noel W. Smith, then general manager of the railroad, that
displays at county fairs, chautauquas, and reunions in the States might
effectively promote settlement because “there are many young men who
have grown up on farms, youths from the sturdy stock which has successfully
colonized America, educated and practical farmers, many of whom are
ready and financially able to stock farms for themselves and to whom
free land in a growing country should appeal.” Smith replied that
the Alaska Railroad had neither funds nor authority to take up active
colonization. However, he was interested in the possibility of attracting
the settlement of such religious groups as the Mormons or Mennonites.
He praised their stable, self-contained communities and discussed the
possibility of such settlement with H. W. Alberts, chief agronomist
of the experiment station, and H. M. Myers, editor of the Lapeer County
Press in Michigan, who was familiar with some Mennonite farm groups.
Governor George A. Parks was also interested in that possibility and
told Charles D. Garfield of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce that he
had discussed the idea with officials in Washington.
I
believe that in some of the eastern states, especially some of the colonies
where there are religious sects, the districts have become over-populated
for the reason that the original farms have been divided and subdivided
to provide places for the children . . . It seems to me that there
must be some bond that will hold people together and in most instances
before, these schemes have been successful the bond has been one of
religion . . . I believe that if we could present the situation
to the people in some of the crowded districts and offer them some inducements
we could get them to come to the Territory.
Although
nothing came of the discussion of colonization at the time, Smith received
from G. W. Gasser, formerly in charge of the experiment station at Rampart
and in 1927 a professor at the Alaska College of Agriculture and School
of Mines, a plan for colonizing three or four regions of Alaska. Each
region would have a cluster of twelve to fifteen homesteads organized
around an agricultural village, and the settlements would be aided by
a loan from the territory, supervised by the faculty of the territorial
college, and organized chiefly for dairy farming.
In
1928 Smith was succeeded as general manager of the railroad by Otto
F. Ohlson, who continued the search for some means of stimulating settlement,
and who had firsthand knowledge of the colonizing activities of American
railroads. An energetic, quick-tempered man, always referred to as “Colonel”
since he had directed military railroads in France during World War
I, he had been a telegrapher in his native Sweden and later in South
America, India, and the United States. After service with the Pennsylvania
Railroad, he had risen from telegraph operator for the Northern Pacific
Railroad in 1901 to directing superintendent in 1928. Although by Ohlson’s
period with the Northern Pacific the great boom in railroad land sales
had ended, he was aware of it and saw a renewed colonization opportunity
in Alaska. At once he wrote and distributed through the Department of
the Interior a mimeographed pamphlet setting forth the agricultural
and other attractions of the territory and pointing to similarities
between Alaska and the Scandinavian countries. In a letter to Secretary
of the Interior Ray 0. West, he argued that the only prospect of eliminating
the railroad’s persistent deficit lay in expanding the industry and
agriculture of the interior, and he referred to the colonizing experience
of American and Canadian railroads as a precedent for similar activities
by the Alaska Railroad. He estimated that the railbelt in the Matanuska
and Tanana valleys would accommodate “at least” 1,500 families on
farms and give them a good living.
In
January 1929 the Alaska Railroad opened a branch office in Chicago to
develop traffic and to promote the tourist trade and immigration. In
April M. D. Snodgrass, until then in charge of the experiment station
at Matanuska and the railroad’s unofficial answerer of inquiries about
Alaska farming and settlement, was appointed traveling representative
of the railroad; he was to visit prospective settlers in the States
and to make arrangements for their settlement in Alaska. In 1930 Alaska,
“The Newest Homeland,” an enlarged and illustrated version of Ohlson’s
pamphlet, was prepared by Snodgrass with the help of the experiment
station staff. In the next four or five years it was revised several
times and was distributed in agricultural areas in the States. At the
same time the railroad sent out posters for display in post offices
and placed advertisements in farm area newspapers.
Although
the railroad could not give settlers direct financial help, it offered
special rates for the movement of household goods and farm machinery,
and Ohlson and Snodgrass negotiated with steamship lines and railroads
in the States for special settlers’ rates and got the approval of
the Interstate Commerce Commission for the arrangement. In addition
Snodgrass helped settlers find desirable homestead locations, and he
and others connected with the railroad found jobs for settlers or their
wives as railroad employees, road-commission laborers, mining camp cooks,
and the like.
Ohlson
was so impressed by the comparison of Alaska with Scandinavia and Finland
that he developed a kind of ethnic-latitudinal theory of pioneer settlement.
He directed Snodgrass to look for no settlers in California, since experience
in that climate would unfit them for Alaska, and he assumed that persons
of north European descent would make the best Alaskan farmers. In the
summer of 1929 he ordered 200 of the colonization pamphlets sent to
the Swedish vice-consul in Seattle and described to him the fine gradations
of racial adaptation to northern settlement:
We
are endeavoring to interest the hardier races such as Swedes, Norwegians,
and Finlanders, to settle in the Tanana Valley, which lies exactly in
the same parallel degrees as do Sweden, Norway, and Finland, for we
believe these races would do much better
in that region, while for the Matanuska Valley we propose to interest
the Dane, German, Hollander, and Swiss, as this region is better adapted
to dairy farming because of its more moderate climate, although there
is, of course, no objection to the northern races settling in this region.
The
idea that there was a special racial adaptation to settlement in the
north was not Ohlson’s alone. The settlers for the Matanuska Colony
were taken from the northern counties of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin
not only because of depression in the cutover region or because of similarity
of climate. Preference was given to people of north European stock “because
of its hardihood and pioneering abilities, proved and tested during
colonization of the northwestern United States.” Ten years later,
after World War II, Harold Ickes said, in renewing his campaign for
the settlement of Alaska, “The thousands of potentially fine pioneers
who could, if given the chance, help to settle Alaska, are living now
in northern Europe.”
The
advertisements in 45 farm newspapers and the distribution of the
information bulletin brought inquiries from prospective settlers. In
July 1929 Snodgrass reported to Ohlson that there had been 592 inquiries,
that he had sent form letters and bulletins, and that he had by then
visited 37 intended settlers. By autumn Ohlson estimated that there
had been 2,000 requests for information. The would-be settlers were advised
that they should arrive in Alaska with some equipment, chickens, and
a cow. More important, they should have at least $2,000 to $2,500 to
carry them through to the time when the homestead would begin to support
them. However, Snodgrass reported, “A number of people tell me that
they would never be able to come to Alaska if they wait until they have
the amount of capital we recommend, and when I find they are real pioneer
stock, know how to meet such conditions, I recommend that they come
and look the country over.”
The
settlement plan seemed to be growing and succeeding. Snodgrass reported
his swings through the western and midwestern states, and between times
he busily performed such tasks for settlers as searching for bargains
in dairy cattle and arranging for their shipment. The railroad’s purchasing
agent and office manager at Seattle, J. R. Ummel, met settlers arriving
on the coast, arranged their passage to Alaska and the shipment of their
goods, and acted as advertiser of the settlement program. However,
there were difficulties. In the middle of one trip through a dozen states,
Snodgrass reported, “General hard times throughout the country has
[sic] caused a number to postpone their making the trip this spring.”
Many of those who were willing to move to Alaska were unable to sell
their crops or their farms at prices that would make the trip possible.
By early 1933, settlers were finding it even more difficult, and many
of them had exhausted their funds by the time they arrived in the railbelt
and had settled on a homestead.
Although
the Alaska Railroad office continued to send out copies of “Alaska,
The Newest Homeland” and to answer requests for information, it suspended
the aggressive campaign for settlement and ended Snodgrass’s trips.
In the summer of 1934, in the early period of growing interest in a
plan for government colonization, Ohlson summed up the railroad’s
work. About 110 settlers had come, but some had returned home after
looking around and others had stayed only a year or two because they
had been unable to find work with the railroad or road commission or
in the mines. After settlement by several hundred homesteaders in the
early period of the railroad building in 1915-16, 172 had remained long
enough to receive patents. Some later homesteaders and the approximately
110 settlers attracted by the railroad program were added, but in 1934
there were only 117 occupied farms in the valley and the lower railbelt,
the total cleared acreage was small, and most of the occupied homesteads
were not actually farmed.
By
the mid-1930s, Alaska had changed outwardly only a little since the early
days of the salmon fisheries and the gold rushes. However, the old belief
that the territory would inevitably follow the pattern of growth of
past frontiers had been weakened. Boosters reaffirmed their faith in
the attractions of Alaska, but increasingly the hope for development
was centered on federal policies. In 1935 no one could quite duplicate
the breathless anticipation of an earlier booster:
In
the years yet to be her great forests will deliver their wealth; her
mines will surrender their riches; her seas will give up their abundance;
her hospitable soil will yield of its marvelous productivity; her verdant
fields will be harvested; her cereals will be ground into flour without
which neither prince nor pauper can live; her sequestered inlets will
become thriving industrial centers where the rumble of her thousand
mills will mingle with the roar of many furnaces.
Alaska
is calling for people. Her outstretched arms are filled with generous
offerings to those who would come and free her from the isolation she
has suffered for unnumbered centuries. [see “Alaska, An Empire
in the Making” by John J. Underwood, 1913]
Miller – Frontier in Alaska
AAITC