George W. Palmer, merchant at Knik, was a southbound passenger on the Admiral Watson Sunday for San Francisco where he will get the schooner "Lucy" in shape, which he has chartered and which is now in the Hawaiian Islands, for the purpose of placing it on the run from Seattle to Knik this season.

Harry Shaugh, who for the past several years has operated a stage line from Wasilla to Willow creek has sold out his horses and vehicles and left for the States.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Friday, Feb. - (AP) - Samuel King, an old-time trapper, took his life by shooting himself at Wasilla Wednesday, coroner's deputies reported yesterday. His body was brought here by airplane.

John L. McAllen, vice president and general manager of Willow Creek Mines, Wasilla, Alaska, will be the speaker at the next meeting of the North Pacific section of mining engineers February 21 at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Mr. McAllen is a member of  the A. I. M. E. and has been in charge of operations on this property for several years.

SEWARD, Alaska, (UP) The Matanuska valley federal colony for drought stricken farmers of the Midwest looks good to John Stahler of Shattuck, Okla., he said today.

Stahler has been in Alaska for several months. He is returning to the states on the steamer Northsar to get his wife and six children and take them to Matanuska.

The 40 acres of lush bottom land in the Alaskan valley are a better bet for a life's work than his 1,200 dust covered acres at Shattuck, Stahler said.

The Stahler family will be the 201st signed for the experimental colony near Palmer.

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 Goethais, 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 times of my life."

PALMER, Alaska, Aug. 10 - AP - Alaska as the 49th state, with the Matanuska colony one of the foundation stones, is the dream of many of this green and fertile valley's modern pioneers.

At the other extreme of views here is an undoubted current of discontent and dissatisfaction with the "corporation," discontent which in the first 15 month's of the colony's existence has sent one out of every four families back to their middle western homes.

The divergent views fail to interrupt the busy life of the colony. The "newness" has not worn off the cabins and buildings and the carefully laid-out community center. Crops are flourishing and herds increasing in number.

President Charles E. Bunnell, of the University of Alaska, urged statehood as the colonists goal in a mid-summer visit.

"That should be your aim," he told an outdoor assembly.

"But how can people hope for statehood without the ability to feed themselves? One dollar's worth of goods produced in this territory is worth many dollars' worth of some other resource.

"You are building for big things."

The colony, in the words of Ross L. Shelly, general manager, has reached the "producing and processing phase" after passing through the "construction period." It was 15 months ago yesterday that the first colonists arrived here, fleeing from a drought-stricken middle west.

At present colonists are engaged in the care of crops. Next week some of them will go to the mountains for the hunting season.

Starting Sept. 4, a four day agricultural fair will be held. The new Anchorage-Matanuska highway will be opened the first day.

The truck garden raised by Walter Pippel, formerly of St. Paul, Minn., has been a "show spot" in this section of the colony. Since the first of June, Matanuska produce has been on sale at Anchorage, 45 miles south of here.

"We have accomplished a great deal since our arrival," Shelly said today.

For example, a model community center, as well as homes, barns and chicken houses for 173 families have been built. The community center houses a modern school, hospital, recreation hall, trading post, warehouse, power plant, creamery, canning plant and repair shops and quarters for personnel.

"Except for the schoolhouse and the recreation hall, the building will be entirely self-liquidating through rental and use charges.

"Most of the unadjusted colonists have returned to the United States. There is a ready market in Alaska for all these people can produce."

On the other hand, some discontent remains among the colonists and finds voice, anonymously. One colonist has said he believed there was as much dissatisfaction and discontent now as a year ago, but that's because the colonists are more scattered, some several miles from the community's center, there has been no organized opposition such as appeared last summer.

The discontent is based on complaints of mismanagement, such of that of colonists who had land ready to plow this spring and it was not touched, or that other land was not fertilized and treated with lime to cure its sourness, as had been promised.

"Sen. Henrik Shipstead, of Minnesota, was here only four hours and what could he, or others on such official visits, learn about real conditions here?" other colonists have asked.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Aug. 14, (AP) - Leo B. Jacobs, manager of the Matanuska colony near Palmer, told the Anchorage Times employees of the Alaska Rehabilitation corporation had named a committee to meet with him today to protest a proposed 10 percent wage cut.

It was reported here employees had voted to strike Monday if the cut was made effective.

The corporation manages the Matanuska colony, where the federal government brought Midwestern farmers for a rehabilitation experiment.