Down on the Farm

An Alaskan farming community, Palmer is known for its vegetable and hay farms and its Matanuska Dairy products.

It’s a nice, old fashioned town. Take time to stroll down Palmer’s sidewalks and savor the 1950’s all over again

Be sure to see the visitor center and garden and the Colony House Museum. You should also try to visit the Musk Ox Farm (shown above).

How Palmer, Alaska Got Its Start

During the Great Depression in 1935, 203 families were brought north from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Michigan to make a new life.

Although a third of the would-be farmers were overwhelmed and left, many descendants of the original colony farmers are still living in Alaska.

Even before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s colony “experiment,” the region had already been identified as a good place to grow crops.

In 1915, a rail track was laid through the region to the Chickaloon coal fields. At that time there were over 300 homesteads in the Palmer area.

Palmer Colonists Picked From Five House Styles

When the Matanuska Colonists came to Palmer, they lived in a tent city.

Then they chose one of 5 basic house styles. The Colony House Museum in Palmer represents one of those styles – a small basic farmhouse.

Local people operate this little museum, which is full of 1930’s artifacts.

Above is a picture of the museum before it was restored.

Near Palmer are both a musk ox and a reindeer farm.

The Alaska State Fair

The first Alaska State Fair was held in 1936, a year after the Matanuska colonists arrived.

Even today, the giant cabbage exhibit is known nationwide. The first winning cabbage weighed in at 23 pounds – a record that has since been beaten. There are plenty of large vegetables to break records with. A huge pumpkin was entered into the fair in 2019, by Dale Mashall of Anchorage. His pumpkin weighed 2,051 pounds and broke the Alaska state record.