Palmer is a full-service community and central to several day trip possibilities. To the north Hatcher Pass Road leads to scenic Hatcher Pass and Independence Mine State Historical Park. The Hatcher Pass area is an alpine paradise filled with panoramas of the Talkeetna Mountains, foot trails and gold mine artifacts including the 16 remaining buildings of Independence Mine. To the south is Knik Glacier that is best experienced on an airboat ride up the Knik River.
Born at the height of the Great Depression as a component of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal relief program, Palmer is the result of one of the country’s greatest social experiments. The mission was to transplant 200 struggling farming families from the Midwest to Alaska where they would cultivate a new agricultural economy. In 1935, flocks of down-on-their-luck families stepped off the Alaska Railroad in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys, deemed suitable by the government for farming. The soil was rich by Alaska standards but the growing season was just long enough for cool-weather grains and certain vegetables and there was little margin for error.
The farmers’ perseverance paid off, however, and today the Mat-Su Valley is Alaska’s breadbasket, producing 75% of the state’s total agricultural output. Palmer is famed for its 90lb cabbages, seven-pound turnips and other monster root vegetables, the result of the midnight sun that shines up to 20 hours a day during the summer. But what is grown commercially, from potatoes and peas to carrots and broccoli, is the same size found in markets in every other state. To Alaskans the attraction of Mat-Su vegetables is not their size but their freshness, produce that comes from just up the road, not 2,000 miles across the country.
The attraction of Palmer to visitors is a small farming community with a Midwestern appearance but almost encircled by majestic mountains. Filled with old farming-related buildings, this community of 5,600 residents exudes a 1930s ambience as much of the downtown area has been preserved right down to the antique furniture and wood floors. The Palmer Visitor Center (907-745-7882) is a rustic log cabin next door to the Matanuska Valley Agricultural Showcase, a garden of flowers and the area's famous oversized vegetables. The Colony House Museum was an original farmhouse from the 1930s and filled with era furnishings.
Many visitors like to cruise Palmer's back roads past original colony farms. Begin by heading nine miles northeast on Glenn Hwy and then hop on Farm Loop Rd and look for vegetable stands if it’s mid- to late summer for a sampling of Mat-Su Valley's freshest and finest fare. Palmer’s most popular agricultural attraction is the annual Alaska State Fair, a rollicking 12-day event that ends on Labor Day. There’s live music, a rodeo, a carnival, the Great Alaskan Husband Holler contest, greased pig races and, of course, the giant cabbage weigh-off to see who grew the biggest one in the Mat-Su valley.