It was a huge investment of optimism when the Matanuska Valley

Previous MEA office building being constructed.
It was a huge investment of optimism when the Matanuska Valley
Farmer’s Cooperative Association (MVFCA) set out to form a
separate electric cooperative in 1939.
Incorporated March 1, 1941, as a member-owned cooperative,
Matanuska Electric Association (MEA) has powered the Valley since
electricity flowed to its first 150 customers across 93 miles of line
January 20, 1942.
Early 1000’s - Earliest known
account of Dena’ina and Ahtna
Athabascan people in the Matanuska and Susitna Valley region.
1870s - Incandescent
light bulb invented.
March 30, 1867 - Russia and the
U.S. sign the Treaty of Cession,
transferring Russia’s interests in
Alaska to the U.S. for $7.2 million.
Since then, Alaska’s oldest existing member-owned cooperative
has grown to serve more than 4,200 miles of power lines across
mountains and spanning rivers, serving MEA’s more than 50,000
members.
It is with great pride we share OUR story, because we are all MEA.
1905 - Orville G. Herning builds the
Knik Trading Company in Knik.
1882 - First commercial electric
plant in the U.S. began operation
in Appleton, Wisconsin, selling
electric power to some of the
city’s wealthiest families.
1912 - Congress passes a bill to
create the Territory of Alaska,
form a Legislature and authorizing
the President William H. Taft to
establish a route for the railroad.
1910 - U.S. government completes
a year-round trail from Seward to
Nome for use by dog sled teams.
1914 - John Bugge homesteads
320 acres near the intersect of
the Palmer-Wasilla and Glenn
highways.
1914 - President Woodrow Wilson
establishes Alaska Engineering
Commission to open up the area
known as the Matanuska Valley for
agriculture.
‘A huge investment of optimism’
Electricity was a practical consideration when members of the MVFCA began
forming an electric co-op in 1939, and later the Matanuska Valley Federal Credit
Union and Matanuska Telephone Association to provide banking and phone
service in the Valley.
Homegrown historian Jim Fox — grandson of Colonists Henning and Irene
Benson — said although federal Colony planners included a power plant in
Palmer to provide electricity to the hospital, garage, creamery, hatchery, trading
post, school and other buildings, there was no plan to extend service to farms.
Electricity was a critical factor in the Valley’s fledgling dairies’ ability to keep
milk cool and fresh for market, which was a challenge from the on-set in Colony
barns designed with wooden floors and no running water, or electricity, to aid in
sanitation.
Work on the Echo Lake line (1965)
E.F. Clements of the Territorial Department of Health and Sanitation brought the
problem to the forefront when he put milk producers on notice in April 1939 that
all dairies would soon be required to have a permit from the health department to
sell milk.
“Electricity had a huge impact on the farmers who stayed, and how it allowed
them to stay,” he said. “The people who formed the electrical co-op created
something that ensured the success of the Colony and made for a real livelihood
for the Colonists.”
Building out the new electric co-op’s lines also added new jobs to the Valley at a
time when wage-an-hour work was scarce, Fox said.
“Valley residents who formed the electrical co-op had a vision for what having an
electrical grid base could mean for encouraging development,” he said. “It was a
huge investment of optimism.”
MEA purchases Talkeetna Light and Power from Myron and
Lynn Stevens (1963) Photo by Dale L. Wahlen.
‘Cheapest hired man I ever had’
The Linn family was among those first 127 customers when MEA began
distributing electricity January 20, 1942.
Allan Linn, 86, still remembers his excitement as the poles approached their farm.
The first transmission line came up from Anchorage businessman Frank I. Reed’s
hydropower plant at Eklutna and ran along the west edge of the Alaska Railroad
line to Matanuska where it split, running east and north to Palmer and west to
Wasilla, he said. Reed constructed the plant in 1929 to serve Anchorage.
Electricity changed life in many ways — from safer lighting and electric wells that
facilitated indoor plumbing, fire protection, watering livestock and crop irrigation,
to refrigerators, freezers, cream separators and incubators for poultry.
“To quote my father, ‘It’s the cheapest hired man I ever had,’” Linn said.
October 1914 - John August Springer
homesteads 320 acres of benchland
1917 - Orville G. Herning moves
on the north bank of a sweeping bend his store to Wasilla after the railin the Matanuska River.
road established a town site there.
April 1, 1917 - Construction of Matanuska Experiment Station begins
under the direction of F.E. Rader.
Employees work on transformer at Palmer substation.
October 11, 1918, - Government
land sale in Wasilla.
1918 - Sutton founded as a station
on the Matanuska Branch of the
Alaska Railroad.
1929 - There are 58 farmers — 12
of whom are married — farming in
the Matanuska region, according to
the Alaska Experimental Stations’
annual report.
1927 - Alaska Agricultural Stations
and the Alaska Railroad cooperate
to establish a creamery at Curry,
expanding the market for the milk
produced in the Matanuska Valley.
It took another year to complete the 287 miles of power lines MEA
needed to reach all its members. But by the end of 1943, all 242
members had current. The first lines were built by men — like Bob
Mielke, Bill Smith and Ralph Moore — with long-handled shovels and
strong backs.
Evelyn Mielke said one of her new husband’s first jobs was digging holes
for a line across the Knik River in 1948. The soil was so sandy, she said
holes were 20-feet wide at the top to get them six- to ten-feet deep.
Linn said workers used shovels with eight- to ten-foot handles to dig
each hole.
Still, electricity was so uncommon in the Valley that when Frank B.
Linn arrived at the experiment station in 1927, Superintendent M.D.
Snodgrass put him in charge of the farm’s power plant after learning he
“knew what a light switch was,” Linn’s son recalled 90 years later.
Electricity was still uncommon in the Valley in 1937 when Colony doctor
Dr. C. Earl Albrecht began writing to the REA about forming an electric
co-op to serve the Valley. Albrecht installed the area’s first residential
generator in his family’s new private residence on Bailey Hill in Palmer
in the spring of 1941.
“Those guys sure were happy when they got the Blue Ox” — a
mechanized posthole digger — at the end of the World War II, he said.
As secretary of the electric co-op Board, Dr. Albrecht is one of five men
who signed MEA’s articles of incorporation March 1, 1941, along with
fellow incorporators Walter E. Huntley, Ross Sheely, Colonists Laurence
Arndt and Edward I. Wineck.
Alaska’s first REA cooperative
‘Dance your way to electric lights’
The Alaska Railroad, the mine operations at Chickaloon, Sutton, Eska
and Independence Mines, the Matanuska Experiment Station and co-op
buildings in Palmer had individual power plants to generate their own
electricity as early as 1917.
Before the REA would authorize formation of the cooperative, it needed
an “accurate report and survey showing that adequate and constant
power can be made available,” according to The Valley Settler, February
10, 1939.
February 4, 1935 - President
Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive
Order No. 6957 withdrawing 8,000
acres in the Matanuska Valley from
homestead entry for the Colony
Project.
May 10, 1935 - There is about 100 miles of
graded road in the region, 20 miles of gravel
road, no paved roads, no road from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage, and no highway was
planned linking the Valley to Fairbanks when the
first 202 Colonists arrive in Palmer.
April 12, 1935 - Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. incorporated.
March 1, 1941 - MEA formed.
1936 - Alaska State Fair founded.
October 14, 1941 - MEA signed its
first power purchase agreement
from Anchorage Power and Light
for a maximum of 250 kWh at a rate
of $0.02 per kWh.
An “Electric Ball” was organized at the Community Hall
March 11, 1939, to fund the survey. “Dance your way to
electric lights,” reads a hand-drawn ad in The Valley Settler.
The dance raised $150, enough for Anton Anderson —
original head surveyor for the Colony — to complete an
18-page report describing construction conditions.
In early 1940, REA sent a telegram authorizing formation of
an electric co-op. Construction began on a distribution line
from the Eklutna hydro plant with approved capitalization
of $187,000, and a $140,000 REA loan received April 10,
1941.
Reed’s plan to extend transmission lines from his expanded
Eklutna Hydro Plant across Knik Arm and the Matanuska
River stumbled when he failed to get financing in 1935.
Instead, MEA constructed the transmission line from
Eklutna in 1941, financed by an REA loan.
MEA’s first power purchase agreement was signed with
Reed’s Anchorage Power and Light on October 14, 1941, to
provide a maximum of 250 kWh at a rate of $0.02 per kWh.
MEA purchased power from Chugach Electric Association
from 1950 to 2015, when the Eklutna Generation Station
began production.
Today Reed’s concrete powerhouse is on the National
Register of Historic Places and stands on the grounds of
MEA’s Eklutna Generation Station.
The original “Electric Ball” event drawing.
61,877
56,409
MEA Historical Tid-Bits
Members paid a minimum monthly charge of $3.50 for
MEA service in 1942. Now, in 2015, it’s $5.65.
28,766
Early MEA members on the Chugiak Line in the 1950s
communicated with MEA via radio because there was
no phone service in that community at the time.
Points of service
Fred Machetanz paid his MEA bill in 1957 with a
watercolor painting of Denali. On loan to Mat-Su
College,the painting is on display in Student Services in
the Machetanz Building in Palmer.
Miles of power line
14,438
A Lockheed P-38 WW II aircraft flew too low over the
Knik River and took out four spans of power lines in
1945.
4,053
The average monthly electric bill for homes was
$15.67 (285 kWh) and on farms was $25.30 (572 kWh)
in 1955.
5,051
2,628
Former MEA General Manager Willard Johnson also
drove the mail truck, being responsible for the mail
route.
The National Academy of Engineering named
electrification as the most important engineering
achievement of the 20th century.
1941 - Power line constructed
from Eklutna Hydro to Palmer.
1943- All original 242 MEA
members had power.
January 20, 1942 - First MEA
members receive power.
January 3, 1959 - Alaska
becomes the 49th state in
the Union.
4,356
2,567
1,766
1,436
471
230
294
93
94
112
345
1942
1943
1947
1955
September 6, 1963 - MEA
purchases Talkeetna Light and
Power from Myron and Lynn
Stevens.
534
1960
865
1970
1980
1990
2010
2015
2013 - MEA begins constructing the
171-megawatt, natural-gas-fired
Eklutna Generation Station.
March 27, 1964 - Alaska Good Friday earthquake knocks out power
to MEA members for three days.
2015 - MEA becomes a vertically integrated utility producing, transmitting
and distributing all of its own power.