Author Notes

MY SON INSPIRED THIS BOOK BY PURCHASING A HOUSE from the 1930s next to a potato field in Palmer, Alaska. As I followed my curiosity about the early settlement in Palmer, I was astonished to discover accounts of a New Deal program that took two hundred and two families off relief and shipped them up to Alaska to become self-sufficient farmers.

Some of those families left behind tar-paper shacks, and some left solid homes with electricity and indoor plumbing. No matter what life had been like for them before, in Palmer they were equal, all starting out in identical tents with shared outhouses.

You’d think that with mud and mosquitoes, and living in tents in the snow, people would have unhappy memories of the early days of Palmer, but most of those interviewed remembered their childhoods in Palmer as a happy time. After all, instead of living on isolated farms, for the most part, they had dozens of children their own age nearby in the colony to play with.

Although I made up Terpsichore and her friends, other people, including Dr. Albrecht, Pastor Bingle, and Don Irwin, were real people who were credited with the survival of the colony. Major incidents, such as the measles outbreak, children dying and the telegram to Eleanor Roosevelt, management problems that left many families still in tents as the first snow fell, and Will Rogers’s visit and plane crash, are all based on real events.

A notable omission in accounts I read of the Palmer Colony was reference to the people who were in Alaska for thousands of years before the colonists: the various Eskimo, Aleut, Athabaskan, and other Indian tribes. Since I married into a part-Native family, I was concerned about this omission, but finally decided not to create contacts with Native peoples if the colonists themselves did not mention them. However, I hope as many readers as possible will visit the Anchorage Museum to learn more about the original colonists of Alaska.

The colony started with two hundred and two families, but over fifty percent of the original colony members left within five years. Thirty years later, only ten percent of the original families remained.

The Matanuska Valley, an hour’s drive from Anchorage, is now the fastest-growing area of Alaska. You’ll find a Fred Meyer store where colonists once planted potatoes. But you’ll still find remnants of the colony era: the water tower, the railroad station, and even Pastor Bingle’s Church of a Thousand Trees, where my son and his wife were married. The early colonists are honored every year in early June with a parade, a salmon recipe contest, and a tour of the Colony House Museum on old Tract 94.

The Talkeetna and Chugach mountains still preside over the Matanuska Valley, and the wind still blows. On street signs, businesses, and mailboxes you will still see the names of the stalwart colonists and their descendants who stayed.