Topic

Historic Preservation in the Mat-Su Borough

What is Historic Preservation?

The National Park Service describes historical preservation as “a conversation with our past about our future”, spurring the curiosity to explore a place more deeply. Historic preservation involves cultural resources, which refer to tangible or intangible things that hold significance to a community’s heritage, traditions, history, or identity. These can include historical sites, buildings, artifacts, landmarks, practices, customs, languages, and oral traditions contributing to a community’s cultural fabric. Through effective historic preservation provides us with the opportunity to explore history from diverse perspectives, pose our own questions about the past, and gain new insights into history and human identity. It serves as a crucial method for conveying an understanding of the past to future generations. The Nation’s history has many facets, and preservation helps tell these stories. Sometimes, historic preservation involves celebrating events, people, places, and ideas; other times, it can consist of recognizing moments in history that can be painful or uncomfortable to recognize.

Historic preservation is a conscious decision to keep those meaningful places and objects in their original states, to the greatest extent possible, while still meeting the needs of today’s population. Through preservation work, we maintain our physical connection to the past, by seeing the places and objects that filled it, reading and hearing the stories of the people who inhabited it, and learning about the events that shaped landscapes and communities over many generations. Preservation of historic places gives community members a visual link to how the Mat-Su Borough and the communities within it were formed, offering a tangible record of the intentions and lives of those who came before us.

Historic Preservation in the Mat-Su Borough

The Mat-Su participates in the preservation structure through its status as a Certified Local Government (CLG). A Certified Local Government (CLG) is a local government certified by the state to participate in federal historic preservation funding and programs. Requirements include having a historic preservation commission, a historic preservation plan, and local review process for projects that may have an impact on historic resources. It also provides access to grant dollars to assist in preserving, protecting, and educating the public about cultural resources. 

Evidence of Mat-Su's successful tenure as a CLG is apparent throughout the region. For example, visits to the streets of downtown Talkeetna, hikes at Independence Mine, events in Colony barns, and concerts on the lawn of the Palmer Ale House showcase the ongoing preservation work that keeps each community's heritage alive. 

Although the Mat-Su Borough office does not serve as a repository for archives, there are nonetheless a variety of historical resources that have been collected over the years. These include forty-seven artifacts and soil samples gathered during field surveys, 104 audio cassettes and film reels, 261 maps and blueprints, including designs of Matanuska Colony buildings from the mid-1930s, over 300 books and reports, and over 4,000 photos. Most of these are physical, although efforts in the past fifteen years have digitized over 150 documents and 390 photographs. Digitizing these resources makes them more broadly accessible, helps preserve these unique links to our past, and prevents the loss of critical information that should be passed down through generations. We plan to make these available through this webpage in the near future.