Population of community outside Anchorage surges

By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY
Updated 25m ago |


Alaska residents are flocking to a bedroom community outside of Anchorage, the state's largest city, while small communities that have relied on fishing and logging are losing population.

Overall, Alaska grew by 13.3% to 710,231 from 2000 to 2010, faster than the national rate of 9.7%, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

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The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, equivalent to a county just north of Anchorage, boomed by 50% to 88,995. The area includes Wasilla, the home of former governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, which grew by 43.2% to 7,831. Palmer, the other prominent city in the Mat-Su Borough, grew 31% to 5,937.

"I had expected an increase in the Mat-Su Borough, but not by 50%," said Virgene Hanna, survey research director for the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska-Anchorage.

"Wasilla is the largest community in the Mat-Su Borough and it's the closest community to Anchorage, so it would be the easiest commute," Hanna said.

The growth in the Mat-Su Borough has been predicted for years, said Ingrid Zaruba, research analyst for the state's Census and Geographic Information Network.

"Housing is affordable, there's still land available to purchase, and that's probably the main reason," said Zaruba, adding that national retail chains have located in that area in the last decade.

Hanna noted that a lot of the communities that have lost population are places that are heavily dependent on salmon fishing and logging. The population of Kodiak Island Borough shrank 2.3% to 13,592; Ketchikan Gateway Borough went down 4.2% to 13,477; and Valdez-Cordova lost 5.5% of its population, which dropped to 9,636.

Logging in the Tongass National Forest has been restricted, and that has affected the timber industry, Hanna said.

Fewer salmon are returning to Alaska to spawn, she said. "Whether it's interception from other places or part of a natural cycle, it's declined," Hanna said.

In terms of diversity, the state saw increases in percentages of Asians from 3.9% to 5.3%. Hispanics increased to 5.5% from 4.1% in 2000.

Alaska's non-Hispanic white population declined slightly from 67.6% to 64.1%; the non-Hispanic black population dropped from 3.4% to 3.1%; and the population of American Indians and Alaska Natives declined from 15.4% to 14.4%.

Contributing: Marisa Kendall

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