The ruins of two wood homes are located around 30 feet from Glacier Highway, north of Kaxdigoowu Heen Dei, or Brotherhood Bridge Trail. The first building is a chimney of rusted steel to one end. Another side has a diamond-shaped window that overlooks the road.
The homes are hidden within a grove of trees with a few small evergreens growing up within the trees. When driving through, Tony Sholty always wondered what they were. He’s stopped to take pictures to keep them in mind after they’ve gone.
Sholty mentions that he was wondering whether the structures were built prior to statehood, perhaps even before the dairy industry of Juneau temporary took over the entire area.
He was partially right. The structures are pre-statehood. It turns out that they’re actually the remains of one of Juneau’s first dairy farms.
An Mendenhall Valley childhood
In the year 2020, someone shared an image of the historic structures on Facebook alongside a jokethat “perfect air-conditioned b&b. Most of it is air.” Elizabeth “Koggie” File said it was her home from childhood.
File began her life in Juneau in the year 1935. she’s been a resident of the Mendenhall Valley her entire life. In 1907 she was born. In 1907, her Norwegian immigrant grandparents, known as the Pedersons built a house in a large field, and then established an agricultural dairy farm.
When File was with KTOO on her farm, she took photos that her parents took of her when she was a young girl in the 1930s.
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”The initial five years of my life, I resided in that residence,” she said. “And it’s me doing my thing right here in the area where we’re sitting. .”
File states that her father used to run across the river every morning when he was a child to go to school and return. Her mother, Jensine Pederson, helped ensure that the school was open during its initial days. When Jensine met then-Gov. Alexander Parks with concerns that the school might close if there were not enough students, Parks told that the school would remain open for as the school had at minimum one student was present each day.
Local legend also mentions Jensine with the creation of the first bridge across the Mendenhall River. The legend goes that she helped an engineer who was suffering with pneumonia. When he inquired about how to repay her she suggested a bridge.
span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”He stated that once they constructed a bridge regardless of how small or insignificant it is, they’ll always repair the bridge in case anything happens,” File said. “And this is exactly what happened. .”
It was in 1956 that Jensine was among the women admitted to the Sitka Pioneers Home, where she was a resident until her death three years later.
“Not a very good dairy land’
Juneau the historian Richard Carstensen has researched dairy farms similar to the ones File’s grandparents owned.
The business took off around 1900, and most farms were erected on the wetlands of what is currently known as Mendenhall Valley and Lemon Creek. Mendenhall Valley and Lemon Creek regions. A lot of them were founded by homesteaders, and later were sold to businesses from the 1920s and into the 1940s. This is what happened to the Pederson farm, which eventually became Sherwood Dairy. Sherwood Dairy.
Carstensen states that their heyday was shortly after the Files bought it.
The industry played a crucial part in a period when it was more difficult to procure milk and meat from outside, Carstensen said. The farm families also pioneered the infrastructure of the region such as bridges and schools.
In World War II, the military seized some of the land that was used for farming. In the postwar period and the time of the airport, they began using growing amounts of this land too.
The last Juneau dairy was shut down in the year 1965. Land encroachment played a role in the decline of the industry, Carstensen said the farms would eventually die.
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”I that’s a way of saying it’s not an ideal dairy-producing area,” he said.
Between the environmental impact and the price of materials, dairies throughout the country have battled for the right to remain open..
The history of Colonial America
Carstensen notes that these farms also played an important role in the colonial past.
Its style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”Those early claims to homestead realizing that they put their feet on one of the fishing camps and village sites and everyone wants the same land,” Carstensen said. “So it was quite a bit of shuffling away of Lingit tradition going on. .”
He claims that this is something he’s become more aware of recently and is influencing how he views the history of Juneau.
Its style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”We may be able to look back at the families that were once romantically loved,” Carstensen said. “And they were capable of providing for themselves, yet they belonged to a group that just came in and pushed aside the previous people .”
But Carstensen said he’s grateful for stories like File’s.
“In spite of my reservations regarding the dairy industry I think it’s worthwhile to know because there’s got to be some gems in there that can be useful to anyone who is trying to come up with practical ways to live our lives and look after ourselves and not burden the nation,” he said.
File states that the majority of days she drives by the crumbling remains in her former home.
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”I’m amazed that it will still stand,” she said. “I’m hoping that one day in the future, when I visit church when I get to home, that the structure won’t remain standing for a long time. .”
Curious Juneau
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