Palmer incorporated as a city in 1951 and is now the seat of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a farm-and-commuter town forty-some miles up the Glenn Highway from Anchorage. The original colonists have mostly passed on, but their barns, their farms along Farm Loop Road, and their fair are still here, and the town still measures its year by planting, the midnight sun, and the long subarctic winter. It remains, proudly, Alaska's farm town.
Palmer is Alaska's farm town — a New Deal colony where Midwest families grew cabbages the size of wagon wheels under the midnight sun, in the shadow of Pioneer Peak. Our Palmer designs gather that into wearable form. Wear the Matanuska Colony. Colony-grown under the midnight sun.
Why People Visit Palmer
Palmer offers something rare in Alaska — real farm country, set against glaciers and peaks. Visitors come for the colony heritage and the State Fair, stay for the Hatcher Pass alpine and the Musk Ox Farm, and leave understanding why this one valley, under all that summer light, became the place Alaska grows its food.
