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B EFORE the Second World War there was little need for commercial agriculture in Alaska. Most people were living in coastal areas where they could be supplied more economically by water routes from the south. Major potential farming areas, all located in the interior, were far removed from the consuming population. Construction of the Alaska Railroad earlier had stimulated demands for vegetables and potatoes, which were met by a few growers who had drifted to subsistence farming following a gradual collapse of mining as the principal industry in the interior. By the early 1930's these local markets had so deteriorated that plans for colonizing the Matanuska Valley provided only 40-acre and 80-acre part-time subsistence farms, with occupants procuring a major portion of their income from off-farm work.Although commercial agriculture is new in Alaska, early Russian fur traders raised vegetables in small gardens and imported a few cattle to eke out food supplies between the uncertain visits of their company ships. In the interior, gardens followed the miners and, where horses were brought in to transport freight, a few native grasslands were mowed for hay and later plowed to grow oats and potatoes. Timber was cut for fuel or building materials, and small-scale land clearing followed more or less accidentally.By 1898 there was sufficient interest in Alaska's agricultural potential to warrant the U.S. Department of Agriculture opening an experimental station at Sitka. In the next two decades six more experimental farms were established. Of these, the Rampart Station in the Yukon Valley was the northernmost; the others were at Fairbanks, Copper Center, Matanuska, Kenai, and Kodiak. All were designed to test crop varieties in subarctic environments. Livestock breeds were introduced at Fairbanks, Matanuska, and Kodiak, the Kodiak farm being closed after the Katmai eruption in 1912 covered the island with ashes, destroying any possibility of growing forage for several years. Federal interest in these projects languished after they had demonstrated that farming was feasible in what had before been generally regarded as a forbidding land of ice and snow.By mid-1932 only the Fairbanks and Matanuska experimental farms remained, and their operation had been taken over by the University of Alaska. At that time and for several years to come,

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