The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Experimental Farm dates back to 1917, but Palmer really got started in 1935 when 200 farming families from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota arrived to carve an agricultural colony from the wilderness. To present day Palmer's 4,000 residents, the colony experiment is just a memory, but there are plenty of links to the past. Surviving colonists and their descendents keep colony history alive. Evidence remains in sturdy log structures, including the United Protestant "church of 1,000 logs" built in downtown Palmer in 1936, on valley farms, in the annual celebration of Colony Days and at the Alaska State Fair.