In 1934, Mary Nan Gamble, an administrative assistant for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (F.E.R.A.), helped with the planning and criteria for selecting 200 farm families from the Midwest to participate in the Matanuska Colony project, a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Mrs. Gamble was one of three people who accompanied the contingent to Alaska, lived with them in tents until the forest was cleared and roads and cabins built on their forty acre tracts. Upon her return to Washington D.C., Mrs. Gamble maintained case records and a project history for two more years. She later made other trips to Alaska for the government as a census official. [From: MS 94 and "Inventory of the Mary Nan Gamble Papers, 1935-1945 (MS 94) and Photographs (PCA 270), 1986."]

Willis T. Geisman was the official photographer for the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. (A.R.R.C.) He produced four or five complete albums like the one in this collection, each with unique captions and photos. The albums cover a period from April to October, 1935. They were dispersed to the A.R.R.C. office in Palmer, the Governor of Alaska, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (F.E.R.A.) in Washington, D.C., and President Roosevelt. They are now held in the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Alaska State Archives, and the Alaska State Historical Library. Geisman was killed while a POW on a Japanese medical ship in World War II. [Information from Jim Fox, 10/8/2002 via email, and 3/26/1993.]