Photo courtesy Alaska State Library, ASL-P270-130

Early settlers of the Matanuska Valley Colony found tents awaiting their arrival in May 1935. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved a project known as the Matanuska Valley Colony in his New Deal in 1935. The idea of moving more than 200 families from Midwestern states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to a community in the wilderness north of Anchorage stirred imaginations across the country.