Evening Times Republican

CROPS IN COLD ALASKA.
Arctic Climate Does Not Prevent the
Growing of Many Vegetables.
Washington, Sept. 4.-Many persons
who have traveled recently in Alaska
have returned with the impression that
this distant northern possession of
the United States is valuable only for
fish, minerals and woods. Suggestion
that agriculture is possible in that
land of snow and ice is generally ridiculed.
Nevertheless the latest publication
of the department of agriculture
is on the work of the Alaskan
experiment station, prepared by C. C.
Georgeson, in charge of the Alaskan
work.
The report covers the operations at
Sitka. Rampart. Cooper Center, Kenai
and Fairbanks, and shows a remarkable
amount of ingenuity in selecting
and coaxing along the crops best suited
to the short, uncertain summer of the
far north. The work has met with
many discouragements and setbacks.
But on the whole it has been satisfactory
enough and a good many of the
mistakes made were the sort that were
to be expected in dealing with an almost
unknown problem. They can be
rectified in the future and the writer
makes the prediction that a large percentage
of the $2,500,000 worth of
produce imported in 1905 could be
raised in the country.
Returns have not been available
from all parts of the land offices, but
it seems that ten offices report 250
homesteads taken up, and while a
number of these probably were taken
largely for the timber on them there
has been enough done in the farming
line to show that Alaska will produce
many things besides minerals and will
be able largely to feed herself.
The
total farm imports into Alaska last
year were $3,340,899. Of this amount
many
things were like tobacco, rice,
sugar and nuts, which essentially belong
to the tropics. But of the products
of the temperate zone there were
$1,527,522 worth of animal
products
and $1,577,628 worth of vegetable products,
and of these a larger portion
can and eventually will be produced
in
the territory.