Local Woman Describes Matanuska Valley
Mrs. Lillian Wilt is smiling at her elder son, Fillmore, who was born at Anchorage, Alaska, in 1915, while his father was an accountant in the
building of the Alaska railroad. The younger boy, William George Jr., was born at Deer Lodge, Mont., and her daughter, Ruth, was born at Salt
Creek, Wyo., in oil fields. Mr. Wilt is a federal employee in Washington, D. C, where his family will join him in September.
Diet of carrots and snowshoe rabbits, plus potatoes that were notably soggy, is the recollection of Alaska pioneering that Mrs. Lillian Wilt,
W220 Indiana, contrasted for the Chronicle today with the 16-cylinder machine-age "pioneering" under federal auspices in the Matanuska valley in the far north.
A Proving Ground.
"But if those folks have the real stuff in them," she said of the Matanuska colonists, "they will like the country, then learn to love it. Those
who manage • to stick it out about three years—well, one wouldn't be able to drive them out of there with a shotgun."
Mrs. Wilt, daughter of W. E. Martin, pioneer Spokane plumber, went to Anchorage as a bride in 1915, when Anchorage was just a haphazard tent
colony on the mud flats.
"The wife of Colonel Mears of the United States army engineers, a niece of General Goethals, and I were the first white women to reach Anchorage when the government started the Alaska railroad on which my husband was chief accountant. My oldest boy was born there in 1916 while a 40-degree-below-zero wind whipped through a rickety frame shack that was called a hospital.
"There were many times I paid $1.50 per dozen for oranges. Our furniture was made from packing cases. We enjoyed those days, and as I]
look back I believe they were the happiest time of my life."