Prior to construction of the Alaska Railroad through the Matanuska Valley, there was little development in the area that would one day be Palmer. One of the first white men in the valley was...
The 1896 Cook Inlet Gold Rush attracted hundreds of gold-seekers to Upper Cook Inlet. A few of those prospectors followed Willow Creek, a tributary of the Susitna River, into the Talkeetna Mountains. According to...
Chickaloon bunkhouse at Alpine Historical Park Chickaloon is a small community located just off the Glenn Highway, about 75 miles northeast of Anchorage. Prior to Western contact the area was occupied by...
Manager’s house at Matanuska Experiment Farm in 1918. The drawing is based on a photograph in the Alaska Engineering Commission collection at the Anchorage Museum. The Matanuska Experiment Farm, located 38 miles northeast of Anchorage...
Herning/Teeland store as it looked in 2015. Except for the side deck and the front signage, the building looks much the same today as it did when Orville Herning owned it in the early...
A small industrial locomotive in front of the railroad depot in Palmer is a reminder of the Matanuska Valley’s coal-mining past. Engine No. 5 is a narrow-gauge Baldwin 0-4-0T saddletank locomotive. The 0-4-0 represents...
Before the Federal government began construction of the Alaska Railroad in 1914, there were only scattered homesteads in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys. However, even before the Alaska Engineering Commission (AEC), the federal agency...
About 14 miles southwest of Wasilla on the western shore of Cook Inlet’s Knik Arm lies the hamlet of Knik. Its history may be most linked with the 1910 Iditarod Gold Rush and the...
The Puhl house as it looked in about 1990. The house and the barn behind it were built in 1935 The log cabin shown in the drawing is the house where my wife, Betsy,...
