Museum Displays
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:18AM At the Palmer Museum, we have a series of displays that trace the history of habitation in the Matanuska Valley. Habitation began when the Ahtna Athabascans migrated to the valley and became the Chickaloon tribe. On display we have a traditional wedding dress, beaded moccasins, a copper cooking pot, and other articles from the Chickaloon tribe. Then history moves on to the mining days. George W. Palmer, who our town is named after, was the first white resident in the area, and was a prospector and merchant. On display, we have many of the tools used to mine coal north of Palmer in the Sutton area. The Matanuska Coloniztion Project follows the mining days. Palmer was born out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Program, which brought relief to Americans during the Great Depression. In 1935, 202 families were relocated to the Matanuska Valley to farm. On display we have many of the farming tools used by the colonists, including an old washing machine. The final piece of history covered by the museum displays concerns Matanuska Maid, the trade name for the items sold by the Matanuska Valley Farmers Cooperative Association. On display we have the orignal dress and bonnet worn by the Matanuska Maid.
Reader Comments (3)
There are a couple of misconceptions and mistakes in this summary that need correcting:
While archaeological evidence suggest earlier, perhaps different human habitation in the Upper Inlet, oral histories and written records dating back hundreds of years point to the Dena'ina as the first Athapaskans to move into the Palmer area. The Ahtna did maintain a trading route down the Matanuska River into Dena'ina Territory from the Copper River area. (The word Matanuska is a corruption of the Russian "Mednovski" or similar words meaning Copper People or the Way of the Copper People or the Copper Peoples' Way.)
There was a somewhat fluid, but respected boundary line between these two Athapaskan groups, somewhere between Sutton and Chickaloon, where custom demanded that one group needed to ask permission of the other to travel into the other's territory at this boundary - or from prior meetings. Not to do so was disrespectful and could result in mortal injury. Many early Russian and European explorers discovered this first hand.
George Palmer was not the first white resident of the Valley by any stretch of the imagination. Several Russian and ACCo traders and miners beat him to that distinction by a decade or two or three. This is an oft repeated, unsubstantiated claim.
Too often bypassed by historians eager to rush to the Colony of 1935, even here there is no mention of the substantial number of homesteaders and settlers who came into the Valley from 1913 to 1935, creating farms - and the communities of Wasilla and Matanuska and the post office of Palmer which was just a section house and log roadhouse with P.O. run by the White brothers. It was not initially named Palmer but had other names until the USPO stepped in and said "enough", requiring the ARR to come up with one name. A contest was held and Palmer was chosen. This happened again when the Colonists came in 1935 to Warton (Palmer), the USPO stepping in to force clarification.
The actual number of original Colonist families is 203. A minor quibble, but history is full of quibbles in need of correction.
Cheers,
Jim
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