History of Palmer
In 1935, under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration established the Matanuska Colony. From the drought-starved Midwest, 203 families traveled by train and ship to reach the fledgling colony. Their housing was in a tent city for that first Alaskan summer. Each family drew lots of individual 40-acre tracts and a farming adventure began. Back in 1935, those original Valley Colonists already knew this fertile valley could produce a rich agrarian heritage, making Palmer the only Alaskan community to develop an agricultural lifestyle.