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National Register of Historic Places Program

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.

 

Campbell House
Alaska's Matanuska--Susitna Valley MPS
Palmer, Alaska
NR Reference Number: 13000129
Listed: 04/03/2013



 Location:

1540 Inner Springer Loop, Palmer, AK

Summary:

The Campbell House is nominated as part of the multiple property nomination for the Settlement and Economic Development of Alaska's Matanuska-Susltna Valley: The New Deal Colony Settlement in Alaska 1934-1940. It is one of the farmhouses, identified as a significant property type in the documentation. An outbuilding, a log chicken coop, one of few extant, is contributing to the property.

The farmhouse is significant under criterion A for its association with the Matanuska Colony resettlement project, a New Deal social program in the mid-1930s intended to help needy people restart their lives. The Matanuska Colony project was one of about a hundred projects around the United States. It was planned to help two hundred families settle in Alaska, obtain land, and at a minimum become self-sufficient but encouraged to establish commercial agriculture. The Campbell House is one of the Colony farmhouses built from designs that were specifically for the Matanuska Colony project.

The Matanuska Colony was planned and designed by an architect, David Williams, with an administrative and commercial center serving farms that radiated from it. The project is significant under criterion C for the distinctive architectural elements of the colony buildings, and for the cohesive community planning it exhibits. The Campbell House is one of the frame farmhouses. Of the 75 frame farmhouses, it is one of the very few remaining, retains defining characteristics of Colony farmhouses, and is distinguished by being at its original location and retaining its original floor plan and massing.

 

Link to full file: Campbell House