Photos: The Matanuska Colony’s agricultural legacy lives on at this horse farm

Updated: October 18, 2017 Published: October 18, 2017

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85-year-old Ken Loyer visits with one of his draft horses on Saturday, October 7, 2017, near Palmer, Alaska. Loyer’s family moved to the Matanuska Colony farm in 1935 with the first wave of colonists. In the background is the top of a Colony barn Loyer uses for hay storage. (Bob Hallinen / Alaska Dispatch News)

Ken Loyer, 85, arrived in Palmer in 1935 with his parents and three siblings as a 1-year-old.

His family was part of the first group of farmers that came from the Midwest as part of the Matanuska Colony project. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal project moved 203 families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to plots of land in the Matanuska Valley around Palmer.

Joseph and Naomi Loyer moved their family from Harrisville, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Huron.

Ken Loyer ran the dairy farm for a period of time before starting Ken Loyer Excavation "to make money."

The original Loyer Colony barn has been refurbished and merged with the John and Magdalene Lake (another Colony family) barn. Loyer moved a different Colony barn to his farm from the site of the Seventh Day Adventist Church along the Glenn Highway. The lower log portion of that barn is gone and the upper portion is used for hay storage.

Loyer keeps several draft horses — the farming power used by colonists before tractors arrived on the scene.

Loyer also keeps vintage Alaska Railroad cars on his property for storage. He's talking with officials from the Alaska State Fair about moving the cars to the fairgrounds.

Bob Hallinen

Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively all over the state. He retired from the ADN in November 2018 after 33 years at the newspaper.