Anchorage Daily News

PALMER

POPULATION: 5,574 (2006)

LOCATION: In the center of the lush farmlands of the Matanuska Valley, 42 miles northeast of Anchorage on the Glenn Highway.

DESCRIPTION: A home-rule city in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, sitting in a valley where farmers produce award-winning vegetables. Its economy depends on a diversity of retail and other services and on city, borough, state and federal government. Some light manufacturing occurs. Many residents work in Anchorage. About 70 residents hold commercial fishing permits. Palmer is home to 200 musk oxen, whose underwool -- qiviut -- is knitted into garments by Alaska Native women from 12 rural villages and sold by an Anchorage cooperative; the 75-acre musk ox farm is a tourist attraction. There are seven schools attended by about 3,000 students.

HISTORY: Two groups of Athabascans, the Ahtna and Dena'ina, have lived in this region for centuries. George Palmer, a trader from Knik, is said to have arrived in 1875 and, about 15 years later, established a trading post on the Matanuska River. A railway siding was constructed in 1916. In 1935, Palmer became the site of one of the most unusual experiments in U.S. history: the Matanuska Valley Colony. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, one of many New Deal agencies created by President Roosevelt, planned an agricultural colony in Alaska, and 203 families, mostly from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, were invited to join. They arrived in summer 1935. Although the failure rate was high, many of their descendants live in the Valley today. The City of Palmer was formed in 1951. Construction of the statewide road system and the rapid development of Anchorage have fueled growth in the area.

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