The same area as previous, showing land ownership in 1932. Map from Ralph Hulbert’s map collection.
“It is not generally known that homesteaders had owned most of the better lands in the Matanuska Valley for 20 years before the Colony was founded. Persons familiar with the Valley during that period reported that 117 families were living here in 1934. Their holdings amounted to 23,000 acres of which about 1,000 had been cleared and cropped. . . .
The ARRC optioned more than 7,500 acres during the spring of 1935. Attempts were made to buy all homesteaded lands in the withdrawn area for Colony purposes. . .
Between 1935 and 1938 the Corporation bought 7,700 acres from private owners for $48,814. . .
Land was even purchased from the Federal government. . . Purchase was made to acquire title to tracts allotted colonists from government-owned land under Executive Order 7416.
The Corporation received no free land. Privately owned lands (7,940 acres) and public domain (5,083 acres) totalling 13,023 acres cost $67,063 or about $5.15 per acre.”
-from Matanuska Valley Memoir by Hugh Johnson and Keith Stanton, a 1955 bulletin of the University of Alaska Experiment Station in Palmer.