Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

Alaska was not the only place where the New Deal tried to resettle the destitute from poverty-stricken rural areas, but thanks in part to Alaska’s special mystique, the proposed project “up north” got considerable press and took center stage. Boosters of the territory were ecstatic. For once the federal government was actually doing something to promote its growth. If these colonies demonstrated that farming could be successful in Alaska, then it could be done on a large scale and many others would stream north. Even Time Magazine wrote, “Many an observer has pointed out that past U.S. depressions were relieved by mass migrations to the frontier, [and] that the present depression is uniquely acute because that safety-valve is gone.” But there was, the magazine asserted, “one last U.S. frontier: Alaska.”44