North to Alaska

In 1935, more than 200 families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were sent in a farming experiment, on the government’s dime, to the Matanuska Valley of Alaska. The “colonists,” as they were called, numbered nearly 1,000.

The Great Depression had left many of America’s working-class families without jobs to start the 1930s. Unemployment rates were at all-time highs, some places noting up to 40 percent of the workforce out of a job. Times were exceptionally hard in the upper Midwest, where farming and logging activities were at a standstill.

“People wanted desperately to be in the project,” said filmmaker Joan Juster.

The colonists’ story, including specific reference to a pair of Koochiching County brothers and their brides, is told in the documentary film “Alaska Far Away.”

“We went to Alaska on a lark,” Juster said. Her 1994 trip with co-filmmaker Paul Hill led to a meeting with colonist Irene Benson. The pair’s friend, Jim Fox, is Benson’s grandson. He introduced the filmmakers to the story, and to the living history embodied in Benson and other colonists.

“We fell in love with the story,” she said.

From that point, Juster and Hill were hooked. It took 14 years for the film to be completed. Public showings of the finished product began in 2008. It has been shown in Alaska and across the Midwest at film festivals, at historical societies and libraries and recently on a public broadcast station in the Twin Cities area.

A Thanksgiving, Nov. 25, showing of the program at 7:30 p.m. on Lakeland Public Television station out of Bemidji is scheduled.

“Wherever we show it, people love the story,” Juster said.

The story still resounds for colony and non-colony families alike, because of the relation of that time period to the current economic conditions, Juster said.

“History comes around, and here we are again in a depression,” she noted.

Modern families can understand the struggle to survive and the spirit that would lead these colonists to make such a bold choice.

Matanuska colony

In 1935, two brothers from International Falls married their young sweethearts and the next day boarded a train headed west. They were given a journal as a gift, and the two young couples would share their first-year experiences.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) had put out a call to struggling families to relocate to Alaska. County relief agents would sort through the applications and find the best candidates for the journey. They needed to be strong and healthy enough to make the trip and boast the best chance for retention in the project.

Couples and families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan would do well in Alaska due to their experience with cold, winter climates and living in isolated, rural communities. These people would not experience the same culture shock as those used to big cities.

In total, 67 families were selected from Minnesota. From Koochiching County came six couples: Henry Peter and Edna Jensen; Fred and Laura Larson; Gilford and Catherine Lemmon; George and Josephine Lemmon; Chancy and Julia Poor; and Marion and Esther Poore.

The Lemmon brothers and their wives are featured prominently throughout “Alaska Far Away,” including the diary they kept during that challenging first year.

Those people who were selected boarded trains to San Francisco and boarded a ship for passage to Alaska. Once in Alaska, farmers would be given land and lodging and would create a new city in the Alaskan frontier. This fertile but remote area was still largely untapped and the U.S. government hoped to further populate Alaska, Juster said.

The 200 families each took out 30-year, $3,000 mortgages and in return were moved to Alaska and were provided 40 acres of land, a house, a barn and livestock. The farmers would grow crops and would sell produce through a co-op set up for the colonists.

The FERA chose Alaska, Juster summarized, because it hoped to change public opinion about the area that was not yet a state. Work on the railroad through Alaska had been completed some 20 years prior, but use of the line was not meeting expectations. The government also hoped to populate the area to support a military base in the state, a strategic location as the country watched World War II building.

In short, the government hoped that not only would it help the struggling families, but it would build a strong, strategic, stable community.

“What’s more stable than a bunch of Midwestern farmers?” Juster asked rhetorically.

Juster described the conditions they faced as harsh. There was little support for young families who were suddenly without the support system they had in the midwest.

Until World War II came about, there was little market for produce in largely unincorporated Alaska. Once military bases were built nearby, a market for the crops blossomed. Some of the families did not last an entire year in Alaska and returned to the “contiguous 48.” After the first year, colonists who wanted to return home did so without government assistance.

Palmer, the Alaskan city that grew from this program, now feels — and even sounds — like any Midwestern town, Juster said. Ever wondered why politician Sarah Palin from Wasilla, Alaska, just 11 miles from Palmer, has what many think sounds like a Minnesota accent? Juster said the people in that region, due to their Midwestern heritage, still bear many similarities to their Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan ancestors.

Many people moved back to the areas from which they came. In Beltrami County, northwest of Bemidji, a small town of Alaska, Minn., was named for those returning to the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” from the “Last Frontier.”

However, the city of Palmer and the Matanuska Valley have survived. The area is still populated, in part, by remaining colonists and their descendants. The children of the adult colonists, some of whom were born in the Midwest, are now reaching 80 years old.

Making the film

Since 1994, Juster and Hill have conducted more than 150 interviews of colonists and their families. They named their company Juster Hill Productions, and this is their first full-length film.

The colonists had been followed closely by the national media, so many news reports and photographs exist in archives. The program had been a media sensation, leaving many accounts of the unfolding events for the documentarians to sort through.

This information, mixed with modern interviews and diaries such as those maintained by the Lemmon family, served the filmmakers as they cut days worth of tape into a 90-minute film.

The filmmakers have entered the film in festivals across the region and in Alaska, taking home several awards for their work. Other public screenings have been held in communities with colony roots. At almost all of the screenings that the filmmakers have attended, they say, someone in the audience has a personal connection to the colonists.

For more information, visit their website at www.alaskafaraway.com. The website includes lists of all colonist families, listed by state and county of origin, as well as more information on the film and the Matanuska Colony. The documentary is available for sale on the website. YouTube trailers are available by searching “Alaska Far Away.” There is a Facebook page with updates on showings of the video.