Wasilla was at the end of the Palmer-Wasilla highway and the road to Big Lake provided access to land west of Wasilla. Until construction of the George Parks Highway around 1970, nearby Palmer was the leading city in the Matanuska Valley. The area was a supply base for gold mines near Hatcher Pass through World War II. government program to start a new farming community to counteract this trend their linguistic influence is still audible in the region. More than 200 farm families from the Upper Midwest were moved into the Matanuska and Susitna valleys in 1935 as part of a U.S. As Knik declined into a ghost town, Wasilla served early fur trappers and miners working the gold fields at Cache Creek and Willow Creek. There are two sources cited for the name, one being derived from a Dena'ina word meaning "breath of air" while another stating Dena'ina derived it from the Russian name Васи́лий Vasilij. Local miners used the name "Wassila Creek", referring to Wassila, a chief of the Dena'ina. Wasilla Station was named for the nearby Wasilla Creek. Local businesses and residents rushed to buy land nearby, and Knik declined. government planned the Alaska Railroad to intersect the Carle Wagon Road (present Wasilla-Fishhook Road) which connected Knik and the mines. In 1900, the Willow Creek Mining District was established to the north and Knik thrived as a mining settlement. Near the mouth of the Matanuska River, the town of Knik was settled about 1880. The area around downtown Wasilla was known to the Dena'ina as Benteh, which translates as "among the lakes". The Dena'ina are one of the eleven sub-groups comprising the indigenous Athabaskan groups extending down Canada's western coast. The Matanuska-Susitna valley was eventually settled by the Dena'ina Alaska natives who utilized the fertile lands and fishing opportunities of Cook Inlet. Early humans moved through the area and left evidence of their passage. Glacial ice sheets covered most of the northern hemisphere during the last glacial period, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, until they disappeared between 10,000 and about 7,000 years ago. "Wasilla" is the anglicized spelling of the chief's Russian-given name, Васи́лий Vasilij, which corresponds to the English name Basil. Wasilla is named after Chief Wasilla, a local Dena'ina chief. Wasilla gained international attention when Sarah Palin, who served as Mayor of Wasilla before her election as Governor of Alaska, was chosen by John McCain as his running mate for Vice President of the United States in the 2008 United States presidential election. The George Parks Highway turned the town into a commuter suburb of Anchorage. Historically entrepreneurial, the economic base shifted in the 1970s from small-scale agriculture and recreation to support for workers employed in Anchorage or on Alaska's North Slope oilfields and related infrastructure. Įstablished at the intersection of the Alaska Railroad and Old Carle Wagon Road, the city prospered at the expense of the nearby mining town of Knik. Wasilla is the largest city in the borough and a part of the Anchorage metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 398,328 in 2020. The city's population was 9,054 at the 2020 census, up from 7,831 in 2010. It is located on the northern point of Cook Inlet in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of the southcentral part of the state. Wasilla ( Dena'ina: Benteh ) is a city in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, United States and the fourth-largest city in Alaska.
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